


Frozen in Time

by Shadow_Chaser



Series: The Trickster Universe [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe of Phase 2, Assassination and wetwork discussion, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Bucky Barnes Feels, Captain America Feels, Cribbing from Firefly and Bourne Trilogy, Epic Bromance, Gen, Long!fic is long, Lost memories and regaining them, Not Agents of SHIELD Season 2 Compliant, Not Thor: The Dark World Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Steve Rogers, Psychological Trauma, Steve and Bucky are like brothers, Thor Is Not Stupid, Trickster Universe, so much spycraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-01-19 04:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 30
Words: 170,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1456024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Chaser/pseuds/Shadow_Chaser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An assassin out of time, with no memories, frozen in time, tries to remember who he is.  Avengers-centric story. </p><p>  <b>Note: Do not have to read stories previous in this series to read this one.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Lookie! Lookie! I'm not writing anything related to Loki! *gets side glare from Loki in headspace* Eeep! *runs away*

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Author's Notes:**

This is a side story to my  _Trickster Universe_ . You do not have to read the other stories to get this one, but some of the events that have happened in those stories make more sense in this one. This is also considered a post- _Winter Soldier_ fic and will be heavily Bucky and Steve-centric. The other Avengers (including Hawkeye) will show up later.

 

**Timeframe:**

Set one year after the events of  _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ . Two years since  _The Trickster: Coterie_ .

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 1_

 

He knew that they were looking for him, searching far and wide with facial recognition and patterns gathered for the last seventy or so years. Every person had a pattern, a footprint if you will, a way of doing things that defined them. His was no different and he knew that – his trusty Soviet-era styled sniper rifle that he used to take out most of his targets. His sub-machine gun and his knives for hand-to-hand combat when the need arose. That was his pattern, his marker. His silvery-arm was the surest sign, a giant red star marked on his upper arm – a giant target that many had tried to hit. Some succeeded, but the material it was made out of – vibranium-kevlar polymer if the brief memories, images, were correct – almost indestructible save for the application of electricity fields.

The best course of action his training taught him was to lay low with the populace. There were brief flashes of images filled with people in uniforms, fatigues, in lab coats, some speaking Russian, others speaking German, French, Chinese, Urdu, and other languages he knew the translations to, but could not place.

The best place was New York City, the city where no one would even be bothered to look because of so many incoming and outgoing persons. It was the easiest city closest to Washington D.C. that he theoretically could have gotten transportation to the soils of other countries. Los Angeles was out of the question as the city grid was too wide, too spread out. Chicago had been under consideration, but his only option was to either fly out – which he could not do since his handlers had always given him his passports and he did not know how to acquire one from their black market contacts – or head into Canada. Toronto and Montreal had been options from there, but the easiest recourse and action was to head to New York.

That had been eleven months ago. One year since he had rescued the man in the spangled outfit who had saved him; called him “Bucky” and showed mercy when he knew that he would not have done the same if their positions had been reversed in the falling remnants of the Insight Helicarrier.

Why he had remained in New York for eleven months since his arrival was a mystery to him, after all, he could have gone elsewhere. His own searches were limited, especially with his spotty memory. He knew that the procedure that had wiped his memories each time had been done somewhere in Washington D.C., but that was not an option. A hazy memory of a face, a name that slipped out of the liquid grasp of his memories, but a face nonetheless he somehow knew could help him regain some of his memories, was just there. But he did not know how, or who, or where to start his search.

It had only been two months ago that he had a lucid dream of the man that had been wearing the spangled outfit, but this time in civilian clothing. He had been sketching something, drawing with fine-tuned strokes of a charcoal pencil, a beautiful rendition of Central Park. That was when he knew he needed to find the spangled man again, that this man could help him draw out the face and for him to use it to find his target – to regain his memories.

But approaching the spangled man was another story. He had taken to watching his coming and goings, having found out with some judicial searches of internet cafes – paid for by money pick-pocketed from tourists – that the spangled man's name was Captain America. It was the silliest name, and he vaguely remembered giving the man a leveled look, but it was in a wooded area that smelled of mortars, soot, and ozone burnt things. Somewhere that was not New York City nor the United States for that matter, a part of him was sure of it.

The media reported that the Captain resided in Avengers Tower, having taken pictures of him coming in and out in his uniform and occasionally in civilian clothing as Steve Rogers. But they could never really get a clear look at him since he left by the tower's helipad and secret tunnels on his motorcycle. He had taken to watching the tower at random times, making sure that the Captain was there and sure enough, had seen him enter and exit via the aforementioned areas. The name Steve Rogers had produced a new set of brief memories that were so jumbled and intense enough that it had left him shaking and unexpectedly crying. He had not understood why he was crying, only that he knew they were not sorrowful tears, but joyful ones. It also gave him headaches, but the headaches were nothing new – something he was aware of every time he contemplated the slippery images in his mind.

He knew him, knew Steve Rogers, that much he was sure of, considering how prominent his memories were of the man, even if it was just brief flashes.

But he also knew Steve Rogers as his target. Remembered fighting him on the Helicarrier, an enemy, someone he  _had_ to kill because it was ordered. He flexed his fingers a little as he suppressed the killer urge to hunt him down and felt the bloom of a headache, right behind his eyes. He had leeway with his targets, especially if there were bodyguards or others trying to hurt him, but his targets were always seared into his mind. His handlers told him it was beneficial in a way that with his mind empty of memories, he would be able to devote his whole being to hunting down his target.

And it was true.

He shook his head a little and lowered the small camera he had nearly crushed in his metallic hand. It was time.

He had been staring up past the iconic roof of Grand Central Station to where the newly rebuilt Stark Tower – or rather now called Avengers Tower – was for the last fifteen minutes or so. He had been occasionally taking photographs, acting like a tourist, but he knew that the police would begin to get suspicious of his presence if not already. The busy ebb and flow of pedestrian traffic at least allowed him some time to gather himself as he pocketed the camera and stepped into the wash of pedestrians.

He made his way across, adjusting his worn baseball cap that had been given by a street hawker months ago. He joined the line of tourists outside of Avengers Tower who were waiting for tickets to see the Stark Industries Museum inside as well as the special exhibit on the Avengers. He did not have to wait long and soon got in, picking up his complimentary earbuds and listening device for the interactive part of the tour. It was similar to the technology provided by the Smithsonian's Captain America exhibit in D.C., but this one seemed to have more Stark Tech incorporated into it. He noted children and adults gasping as their devices started projecting a holographic image of a miniature Howard Stark talking to them.

He resolutely did not look down as Stark also started to talk to his device, the earbuds hanging around his neck instead, covered by the neckline of his hoodie jacket. He thought he remembered seeing the same man, a much younger Howard Stark laughing, dressed in three-piece suit, surrounded by women after the failure launch of a car that hovered in the air. He blinked, feeling the headache move further back along his skull and shook his head to clear the image from his mind.

Instead, he pretended to be staring at some of the exhibits as he discreetly looked around, spotting cameras, exits, and what was definitely places that were off limits to civilians and tourists.

After about twenty minutes of walking up and down a few exhibits, he moved towards one of the guards, grabbing his earbuds like he had been pulling them off his ear. “Bathrooms,” he asked, keeping his voice polite and curious. It sounded like dragging a metal chair across a polished floor in his opinion, but he had not had the need to talk to anyone for the past year.

“Outside the ticket booth, but if you're looking for one on this floor, it's next to the exhibit on the prototype Arc Reactor and to your left,” the guard sounded like he had pointed many tourists towards the bathroom today.

It would have been polite to thank the guard, but the words rang foreign in his mind before he headed towards the direction the guard pointed out. He kept an eye on the cameras as he walked and entered to find that there were no cameras near the stalls or urinals, per privacy laws. One was located in a shadowy corner, but he noted that its path did not track towards the general area. He took a quick inventory of the restroom before making his move.

There were only five other men in the restroom along with two children whom were washing their hands. He drew out a small coin-like object, a gift the infamous Black Widow had left on his arm when he had been targeting her, and activated it before flicking it casually with his thumb. The results were immediate as the lights flickered briefly before plunging into darkness.

Surprised yells as well as cries echoed in the restroom as he used his enhanced speed and strength to open the grating into the air ducts, climb into it, and closed it as seconds later the lights returned. He held his breath and stilled himself as he heard some of the guards come in to see what the commotion was about, but soon left after muttering about the arc reactor under the tower having a power surge. There was only enough charge left on the electrical disc after a majority of it had been used to disable his arm, but he was glad that it worked.

He turned, his fine-tuned senses masking his movement in near-silence and started to crawl. Shimmying and lifting himself up through the various entryways, fans, and turns, he let his instincts take over as he slowly made his way up. Though he had never studied the layout of the Avengers Tower, he knew he was headed in the right direction. He did not know where the instinct came from, but supposed it was like the same instinct that drove him to place a bullet where he knew his target would be hundreds of meters away.

After several minutes, he reached a grating and after making sure no one was nearby, dropped down into a women's restroom. By his reckoning, he was several floors up and more than likely in the more administrator sections of the tower. Stark Industries' main headquarters was near Malibu, California, but they had always maintained a second headquarters along with their former rival company Hammer Industries. With Justin Hammer in jail, the company had folded soon after and S.I.'s CEO, Pepper Potts had brought the land to convert it into a new factory branch for S.I.'s new green technology division. That was where the arc reactor powering the building had been built from.

He had read rumors that the tower itself was powered by a very advance artificial intelligence, that could instantly detect and subdue intruders. There had to be an identification algorithm written in there, perhaps connected to Interpol, SHIELD, or any of the vast intelligence networks world wide if it was able to detect and subdue intruders. The risk was great for him since he knew he was a wanted man – not wanted by the agencies, but by his employers. Before coming up with his plan, he had internally debated the merits and decided that it was a risk he was willing to take. Not because of the potential of having his employers find him, but rather because of what he read about Tony Stark.

The man did not like playing by the rules, preferring to make his own. And if he was such a man, who was it to say that the artificial intelligence guarding the tower had similar programming?

He stepped out of the women's restroom and stared up at the nearest security camera, face impassive. He took his baseball cap off and removed his jacket. Five seconds later he received his wish as alarms blared.

It was only then that the Winter Soldier allowed himself a little smile.

* * *

“Sir, there's something you should see,” JARVIS's voice overrode the music that was blaring in Tony's workroom as he finished tinkering with the body of the Mark Z-III Iron Man suit.

“You know I don't like being interrupted when Daddy's having alone time with his toys,” he ran an eye over what he did before a crooked smile worked its way up his face. It was perfect – until he figured out what else he could do to further tweak the suit.

“Sir, I insist,” the A.I. said, a hint of worry in his tone before Tony rolled his eyes and sighed, waving the music off with an absent hand.

“All right, what is it?” he shook his head as JARVIS brought up a video feed and Tony nearly felt his heart stop at the image.

“What, the hell...?” he blinked several times and rubbed his eyes for good measure at the sight of the Winter Soldier  _standing_ casually in the hallway of one of the lower levels of the tower.

“There is a one-hundred percent match to the Winter Soldier, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, sir,” JARVIS said, “I have alerted security to lockdown the building and evacuate the building. NYPD has been informed that the Tower has gone into lockdown-”

“Did you tell them?”

“No, sir,” the A.I. said, “per your orders from Captain Rogers. He has also been notified as has former Agent Hill. Both are on their way down to the floor-”

“Why the hell is he just standing there?” Tony wondered out loud as spread his fingers out, widening the video feed, “he's...not moving...”

“I do not know sir,” JARVIS replied, “shall I notify Colonel Rhodes and Falcon?”

“No to Rhodey, yes to Wilson. He's been out there keeping an ear to the ground in D.C. Geez...” Tony frowned as he considered his options and pushed away from the table, “JARVIS, suit, and also let NYPD, Fire, and whatever, that it's just a slight malfunction with one of the labs.”

“Yes sir. Sir, Dr. Banner is also-”

“Tell Bruce to stay put where he is in the labs. I don't want him going all green in case Winter Soldier decides to wipe us,” Tony ordered as he stepped onto the platform and the Z-Mk. II began to assemble around him, “actually, tell him to be on alert  _in case the Winter Soldier decides to wipe us_ .”

“I'm sure he would use his discretion,” JARVIS replied dryly directly into his HUD as the suit finished powering up and Tony headed outside. He stepped off of the platform, dropping several stories as JARVIS displayed a holographic imaging of the floor plans and the locations of Steve and Hill, the former of the two making his way far faster down the stairs than Hill who was in another stairwell coming down from S.I.'s branch offices.

“Anything happening?” Tony activated his suit's hovering mode as he noted the stream of civilians and pedestrians coming out of the building. NYPD had shown up and was erecting a barrier around Grand Central Station to ensure that no unauthorized personnel would be able to break through. Above, he noted that the news choppers were already hovering, though kept in place by police choppers.

If there was one thing that Tony found ironic was that the NYPD had actually heeded his request – one year ago, before SHIELD had been dissolved under the wake of the HYDRA scandal, they would not have given him the time of day. Now, with a majority of SHIELD's secrets out there in the public, he had been treated with far more respect and a kind of authority that made the government take heed of his actions.

He had seen the secrets released, memos on past missions, target lists – finding himself, Pepper, Rhodey, all of his friends on the target list had been very disconcerting – a report on his parents' accident that was no 'accident'. But reading them, that was something he had found difficult. It was not that the secrets were there, especially the ones that proved he was right about Phase Two and all sorts of other weaponry, but rather because there was something inherently  _wrong_ about reading the secrets of his friends, some of whom lived in the Avengers Tower with him.

He had seen at least a petabyte of files on Bruce alone, most of it dealing with his research and transformation into the Hulk, and it was he who had invited Bruce to live in anonymity at the tower in the first place – soon after trapping Thanos in the Tesseract prison three years ago. So far, none of SHIELD's files indicated that they knew Bruce was living here, but they did speculate that he occasionally visited.

There was another petabyte and some more on Captain America himself – filled with a lot of psychology analysis and tests, especially Dr. Erskine's notes on him. Attached to those notes were notes made by his father Howard, the Tesseract cube, limitations of technology – all sorts of things that Tony would have once loved to read about, but now felt oddly betrayed by them. He wondered if it was his lifetime of corporate secrets, of keeping secrets himself, of the beginnings of the Iron Man suit, trying to bring Rhodey in and keep it hush-hush before he decided to hell with it and announce that he was a superhero.

He had seen the news regarding SHIELD, had seen the reports that Nick Fury had been assassinated by the fabled Winter Soldier. Had almost put on the suit to help Rogers, but everything had happened so fast that by the time he had flown there, the Triskelion was destroyed, Rogers was in the hospital, Natasha was gone after testifying in front of Congress, and SHIELD was officially dissolved. The only saving grace was that Senator Stern had been outed as a HYDRA supporter and Tony was able to see him led away in-person before Rhodey had absconded him to warn him that the government was paranoid and jumping at shadows at anyone who may be HYDRA.

Tony had gotten the implied warning to be on his best behavior, but since when had he followed orders like that? He had done the opposite and marched straight into the emergency Congressional panel and told them what he really thought of what was happening, nearly lynching good men and women like Natasha, Hill, Fury, Coulson, even Steve for all that had happened. Congress had pushed back – their constituents did not like it and public support favored him.

He then offered a place for Steve and his friend Sam Wilson as their base of operations for their search for the Winter Soldier, Steve's formerly-thought-dead-best-friend Bucky Barnes. Wilson had thanked him for his tech and Tony had been confused until he mentioned his unit, the 58 th United States Air Force rescue paratroopers who used the wing-flight system tech he remembered tinkering and approving the plans for a few years ago.

Nearly one year out and Tony wondered  _why_ now of all times was the Winter Soldier showing up at the tower. “Any change?”

“No sir,” JARVIS replied, “sir, Rogers has arrived on the floor.”

“Got audio?”

“Negative, I'm patching in the security footage-”

“Evacuation?”

“Ninty-five percent of personnel are out,” his A.I. replied.

“All right, let's head in and make sure he's not here to kill Steve,” Tony had a contingency plan that involved tossing the Winter Soldier high up into the air and away from the populace should anything happen. If a fight broke out, he did not want the structural integrity of his building compromised by two super soldiers hitting each other with the force and power of at least half of the Hulk.

JARVIS plotted the optimal path of entry which would only shatter one window, for now, and have the debris fall in the gardens plaza instead of on people still evacuating, and flew towards it.

* * *

Steve felt his heart pounding as he stepped carefully out of the emergency stairwell, shield strapped to his back. JARVIS had already helpfully provided the distance, steps needed for effective neutralization, even points in the hall where he could ricochet his shield to be most effective, to where Bucky apparently still stood. He silently appreciated the information, especially since the A.I. had taken in his combat style and preferences and provided what he needed. But at the same time, he could not tamp down on the apprehension that had filled him.

What was Bucky doing here? Why now of all times? Where had he been for the last year or so, and how long had he known he was here? It was clear from what JARVIS had said as he and Agent Hill raced towards the floor Bucky was on, that the A.I. had extrapolated Bucky's appearance as not a coincidence. His not-so-dead friend had planned this, had known and studied the tower's layout; had known where the weakest points were (through the touristy part of the first two floors), and for all intents and purposes,  _had not moved a single inch_ since walking out of the restroom. JARVIS had also extrapolated that Bucky had used the vents as his entry and exit point, but also knew what floors to minimize exposure.

This floor was mostly administrative offices for various departments in S.I., but it was also heavily shielded from RFID, satellites, and any type of electronic or wire tapping. To Steve that meant that Bucky did not want to be found, but had been willing to be found by them, by the Avengers. Maria Hill's office was several more floors up, just one floor below the start of the labs and Stark's penthouse, but it was also similarly shielded. Tony was not taking any chances with HYDRA or SHIELD after what had happened the year before.

Steve kept his shield strapped to his back as he navigated the halls to where Bucky was. He knew that if it was anyone else who had been the Winter Soldier, he would have already drawn it and held it defensively, but this was Bucky. This was his best friend, almost akin to his twin brother. Though they had been born in different years, it was only ten months that technically separated their ages, Bucky the younger one.

He turned the corner and froze, a surge of emotions raging inside of him as he saw that it was really Bucky standing in the middle of the hallway. He had put his jacket back on, but the baseball cap had been discarded to the side. Still, the silver gleam of his cybernetic metallic left hand was visible as it flexed and curled into a fist. Steve did not know what the gesture meant, having no memories of Bucky actually doing something like that, but he wondered if perhaps it was a phantom memory of an arm that had been replaced.

Flat eyes stared at him, and Steve could not even fathom what was behind that emotionless gaze. Bucky's eyes used to be expressive, lighting up with humor, seriousness, even the cold professionalism to which he shot people with his sniper rifle. Here...this was the same eyes that he had seen when he had first fought him in the streets of D.C. This was not the rage-filled eyes, the broken  _hurt_ that had tried to pound him into oblivion as the Helicarrier crashed around them.

He noted that the corners of Bucky's eyes were crinkled, just the barest hint, but visible through his enhanced senses. The crinkling was not of a smile nor of anything else except to denote pain. Otherwise, Bucky stood before him as emotionless as one of Tony's Iron Man suits.

“...Bucky?” he tried out cautiously as he approached slowly, spreading his hands out to show that he was not going to draw any weapons. As much as he wanted to run and hug his best friend, he knew that any fast movement would probably send Bucky into a frenzied action.

“You...were my mission,” Bucky's voice rasped like it had not been spoken for ages and Steve briefly wondered if he had spoken at all since he had screamed those words into his face before he fell into the Potomac.

He stayed silent, knowing no words said now would be beneficial and instead would be empty air. The distant crash of glass followed by the faint familiar sound o repulsors made him turn back a little even though every single one of his super soldier senses screamed for him to turn right back around and make sure Bucky did not ambush or attack him. He ignored those senses, trusting Bucky to  _not_ stab him or shoot him, and touched his ear where he had put in the earpiece to talk to Maria and to Tony, “Stark, stay where you are!”

“Like hell-”

“I got this-”

“Cap, that's the Winter Soldier-”

“It's Bucky, Stark, not the Winter Soldier-”

“And how are you so sure, it is...Bucky?” Steve turned around, blinking in surprise at Bucky's words.

“Buck-”

“That man in the Air and Space Museum...” Bucky's voice was still raspy and quiet, but it sounded strange, almost as if it was in some kind of agony, “that man-”

“Is you,” Steve cut in, seeing the crinkles furrow with further pain, “that man was you and you are still that man. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the Howling Commandos.”

“I...”

Steve's eyes widened as Bucky suddenly fell to his knees, his right hand grasping at the long strands of hair, eyes squeezed shut in what was clearly pain etched across his face. His metallic hand punched a hole into the ground and whatever he was about to say dissolved into a hiss.

“Bucky!” he surged forward only to stop as those dead eyes bore into him, an unspoken command  _not_ to come any closer. “...Bucky-”

Bucky's lips peeled open in a grimace as he clearly fought with something internal and let loose a shaky gasp, “You...were....my mission...”

Steve did not know why he said those words again, but shook his head even though it was clear that his friend could not see him as he dug his fingers deeper into his head, “No, you're Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the Howling Commandos. United States Army Strategic Scientific Reserve. You're my friend,  _I know you_ .”

Bucky punched the floor again with his arm, cracking through plaster and electronics that were wired underneath.

“I'm with you  _to the very end_ -”

That was when his best friend suddenly howled, a terrible soul-ripping sound that made him step back. Horror filled him as he watched Bucky suddenly collapse to the floor, thrashing as if someone was electrocuting him. “Bucky?! Bu-”

The sound suddenly cut off as Bucky heaved gasping breaths on the floor, staring up at almost nothing before turning his head. Steve felt tears pricking in the corner of his eyes as he saw the  _emotion_ the sorrow, the hurt, the pain in them. “Help me...” his best friend whispered and all Steve could do was nod as Bucky's eyes rolled into the back of his head as he passed out.

“Always.”

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Just to be certain – I don't write romance, I don't write pairings. I do write a really nice epic bromance from time to time and that's how I see Steve and Bucky. Also, I believe that Bucky has a lot of his mental faculties (ala Jason Bourne), but just doesn't exactly have the memories to go with it. Also, I'm taking a leaf out of Timothy Zahn's  _Star Wars: Heir to the Empire Trilogy_ playbook regarding Bucky and the targets he is assigned to kill. See you next chapter!

 


	2. Chapter 2

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 2_

 

Steve did not want to stand in front of a surgical observation window again - not after watching Director Fury 'die.' It was not that he did not like concept of death, he had dealt it to many since he became Captain America; as well as seen plenty in his lifetime, especially within the Howling Commandos and their war against HYDRA during World War II. He had held fellow soldiers in his arms as they died from their wounds. The Commandos worked with both elite and regular units during the war, and while they had suffered only one – actually now, zero – casualties during the course of the war; there were plenty of others who had made the ultimate sacrifice. Far from the fact that he accepted death as it came, it was the hopelessness that made him hate the observation window. The hopelessness of not being able to do  _anything_ except stand there.

But he was standing in front of such a window once more, looking in, feeling helpless as Dr. Banner examined Bucky. His best friend was lying in one of the state-of-the-art medical chairs that turned into a comfortable bed. It was designed by Stark himself and Bucky was still unconscious and heavily sedated in case he woke up. The only thing Bruce had allowed him to contribute was the decision of the dosage. The reasoning was that it was clear Bucky had undergone a variation of the super soldier serum like he had; judging by how hard he had hit and had fought a year ago.

Dr. Banner had even shooed Tony out of the room after the latter had wanted to look at Bucky's mechanical arm, already noting how state-of-the-art it was for a relic supposedly created seventy years ago. He had begun to speculate the technology embedded within followed by technical jargon about servos and motors that Steve had a hard time following. The general gist Steve got was that Tony was comparing it to technology similar to his Iron Man suits. The meaning was puzzling, but he also knew that Tony was worried that more of his tech that he had created and given to SHIELD had also been to improve Bucky's arm and potentially killing others with it.

He knew that Stark was already under a lot of pressure from Congress regarding how the Insight Helicarriers had repulsor technology when he would not even share them with the United States government. However, since Tony had all but rebuffed Congress and taken a lot of displaced SHIELD members under his company's wing, he figured that the pressure was perhaps not too great. Perhaps it was a little unfair to Tony, but Steve was glad that he was able to deal with the politics instead of having the spotlight shoved onto him.

He had told Sam Wilson a little over a year ago that there were a few things he liked waking up seventy years later and also a few things he did not like. Politics, was one of the few things that had not changed one bit and he still disliked it.

“Been doing a little digging about that arm of his,” Tony's voice broke into his thoughts as he turned to see him ambling out of the elevator, familiar silvery dried fruit packet in his hand. He shook his head as Stark wordlessly shoved the packet towards him before shrugging and popping what looked like dried pineapple into his mouth and chewed it.

“Find anything?” Steve turned his gaze back to the window and saw Bruce taking the stylus and making notes on the three-dimensional holographic projection. He frowned a little as he saw that the projection was not of Bucky's blood work or vitals, but rather was now an imaging of his brain. However, he did not knock on the window, trusting Bruce to do what he needed to do.

“Yep,” Stark shook his head, “Dad used to say that your shield used up all of the rarest metal in existence, vibranium, right?”

“Yeah?” his eyes tracked Bruce as he walked over to one of the centrifuges in the room, or at least the one that was not covered by mounds of paper that he had dug out in the past few hours of his old research notes into the super soldier project at Culver University. Bruce took a few of the vials that had been spinning for a while and was examining it, bringing up another projection and seemingly talking to thin air, though Steve supposed it was JARVIS.

“I cross referenced the files you gave me from Natasha and traced it to several dummy corporations in what used to be the Eastern Bloc when Soviet Russia still existed. The shipments were definitely listed in ancient CRAY databases that still exist, though are unused, but then there's a curious address listed in one of the early existence of the arm's manufacturing.”

“Well, don't keep me in suspense,” he grimaced a little as he realized his words were mean and opened his mouth to apologize before Tony laughed a little.

“Get this, it's your old SSR bunker that you guys used in London back in the World War.”

The words registered about a second later and he pulled his gaze away from the window to stare at Tony. “What?”

“The old SSR bunker, you know, the same one that Coulson's using as the unofficial secondary headquarters of SHIELD for those who don't want to be residing in the Tower? That same one that Thor's kind of semi-guarding only because Dr. Foster is in London at the moment, working on some weird teleportation, convergence, something project that she and Dr. Selvig aren't really talking about since we talked to them, oh, maybe a couple of weeks ago?”

“Did you ask Agent Coulson about that?” the implication rattled Steve as he blinked several times. They had all known about HYDRA leeching onto SHIELD during its inception after the war was over, but what Tony was saying... Could HYDRA have been everywhere? They clearly had different branches and not all were unified – or at least those who used HYDRA's name were ignorant to the main 'head' so to speak, was located within SHIELD. Jormungandr's attempt a little over two years ago had proven that – his HYDRA faction was clearly not affiliated with the one that had parasitically latched onto SHIELD.

“Just sent the request myself before coming up here,” Tony shrugged, “it's going to take some time since Coulson's still trying to keep everything secured. HYDRA really did a number on SHIELD.”

Steve understood the non-spoken statement and also what Tony had done since SHIELD collapsed. Of all of the so-called SHIELD bunkers, the Avengers Tower was the most visible and therefore the biggest target for HYDRA. While he knew Stark would never show it, he cared for the agents that had been displaced and understood what Coulson was doing in wake of Fury's absence – or in Stark's knowledge, his death. The Agent was secretly planning missions, infiltrations, anything and everything SHIELD used to do, but to eradicate HYDRA from within. The Avengers were the public and visible front of SHIELD's efforts while Coulson's actions were in the shadows to take down the parasite.

While Tony had more or less painted a giant target on the tower and on his teammates, it was something Steve did not mind. He would rather be the shield than the sword to protect those who could not defend themselves. If he needed to protect Coulson and the other agents he was gathering for secret offenses and the like, then that was fine. It was his responsibility and his job – to protect the helpless from bullies like HYDRA. But he was not so naïve as to know that sometimes, the helpless were not so helpless and occasionally were bullies of their own. He just trusted and hoped that Coulson and the others' actions were morally sound. The world did not need another Project Insight or algorithm that would kill anyone before they could prove themselves.

“How's Sleeping Beauty?” Tony jerked his chin towards where Bucky was still unconscious as he popped a couple more dried pinapples into his mouth and chewed, “Want one?” Bruce was now seemingly flitting back and forth between the various projections he had up, one hand still holding a vial of blood. There was now something that looked like a spinning wheel-within-a-wheel of sorts on one of the screens, but it was too small for him to make anything about of it.

Steve shook his head again as he watched, trying to figure out what the three-dimensional image of Bucky's brain was all about. He was somewhat familiar with human anatomy, after being his mother's power of attorney when she had fallen ill and passed away. Her doctors pointed out the various things that had ailed her and gave him a crash course on basic anatomy, but that was about it. The brain however, was a mystery to him.

Tony suddenly tapped the window, “Hey Bruce, I know you like AIM's brain tech that they helpfully gave me, but seriously? You're gonna have a crush on some assassin's brain there? Though I guess if you ask Natasha, she probably has a really sexy one.”

Steve frowned as he half-glared at Stark who only grinned as Banner stuck his middle finger in their general direction before going back to work. At first glance, one thought that the window was see through for both sides, but Steve knew that Bruce had tinted his side of the window to prevent any sorts of distraction, read: Tony being Tony, when he started his examination of Bucky.

Lifting his finger from the window, Stark sighed loudly and shook his head, chuckling to himself. Steve suppressed the annoyance that suddenly rose in him, trying to tell himself that this was just Tony being Tony, nothing more, but it was hard seeing his best friend unconscious in the other room, the helplessness of not being able to do anything-

“Hey, I'm sorry, Steve,” Stark's hand on his shoulder seemingly lifted the annoyance as he saw his friend give him a wan smile, “I know this is probably hard for you.”

“...Yeah...” he muttered mostly under his breath as he scrubbed his face, feeling tired, “Just-”

He felt his cellphone vibrate in his pocket and pulled it out as Stark muttered something about 'it was not a hospital protocol here so why did he have a phone on vibrate,' or something like that, but ignored him and answered it.

“Rogers here,” he said.

“Hey,” Sam's voice sounded a little distant along with what was clearly signs of traffic which meant that he was driving somewhere, “don't worry, hands-free device if you're wondering.”

Steve laughed tiredly, wondering when had it become apparent to his friends that he followed almost all laws whenever he was out of uniform or even in it, made sure that the rules were followed to an extent.

“Listen, I'm kind of stuck on the Garden State and don't get me started on the Jersey Turnpike, not at rush hour up to New York. And no I am _not_ taking the pot-hole filled Palisades when I get closer to the city. I probably won't be there until later tonight, but wanted to let you know that I'm heading back as fast as I can. Since the radio's not reporting anything about the tower getting hosed or Grand Central Station being reduced to rubble again, I'm assuming that you and Bucky talked things out and he's not here to kill you again?”

“He...uh, passed out,” out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bruce approaching door that led out of the lab-turned-recovery-room.

“Come again?” Sam sounded dubious.

“He asked me to help him before he passed out,” Steve shrugged even though he knew that Sam could not see him.

“Well, that's a good start-”

“And that's what I want to talk to you about, Steve, Tony,” Bruce said at the same time Sam spoke and Steve turned to see the door closing behind him.

“Uh, hey, hold on,” he took the phone off of his ear and stared at the screen for a second before tapping the button that hopefully got it to speaker mode. He was getting used to the upgraded technology, but at the same time, was still learning to curb his strength as materials and objects made in this day and age felt a lot cheaper than the sturdy army phones he used back in the war. “Sam?”

“Yeah?” Sam's voice projected from the phone and Steve silently congratulated himself on not crushing his tenth phone since waking up from being frozen.

“If it was a StarkPhone instead of you know, one of the other ones, you could have easily just displayed it,” Tony ribbed none too gently and Steve only rolled his eyes at him.

For the first few times Tony had made fun of his phone for not being state-of-the-art, he had defended his choice by saying that it was something he wanted to buy on his own – not have it gifted to him when it was obvious that it was worth more than he could probably afford. He hated people giving him gifts that were frivolous or utterly out of his salary range – it made him feel cheap. The only 'advance' technology he had accepted was things that helped him on the battlefield, like his shield and field gear. Now, he ignored Tony's sarcastic remarks.

“Hey Mister Stark,” Sam's voice had a hint of wry warmth in it.

“Hey yourself Bird Boy,” Tony sounded equally amused. When Steve had first introduced Sam to Tony, his friend had all but expounded on the wonders of the flight harness technology that made him codenamed Falcon, and how it had performed in the theatre of war. Tony had taken it all in stride and had led them down to his workshop where he had showed Sam the latest prototype while also apologizing for not being able to make it better soon enough for the loss of Sam's wingmate.

That had surprised both he and Sam, but in hindsight, Steve realized that it was what Tony would have always done – his occasional self-sacrificial streak trying to make up for defects so that no one else would die under his watch. The two had also become good friends by virtue of talking about the wingsuit specs and improvements. It had reminded him a little more than painfully of him and Howard's relationship when the elder Stark had all but jumped at the chance to design his suit, shield; everything and anything he needed for the Commandos.

“Sam, do you mind doing a favor?” Bruce spoke up.

“That you, Doc Banner?” Sam asked, “sure, what do you need?”

“I need you head back to D.C. and wait for a bit. I'll call you with the details after JARVIS is finished decrypting some of Alexander Pierce's classified files. He's told me it'll take, uh-”

“-six hours at the most, sir, using the original entry way for the Phase Two project,” JARVIS spoke up around them.

“Really?” this time Sam sounded a little annoyed before huffing a loud sigh, “Why? What's up?”

“I've done some preliminary analysis and blood work and it looks like that Bucky's been subjected to a lot of...experimentation,” Bruce winced, refusing to meet Steve's eyes and even Tony's, “torture...electro shock therapy...along with other things, at least that's my guess. His brain chemistry is a mess with holes and dark spots in both temporal and frontal lobe. It's suggesting that's why he has no memories of you, but at the same time, recognizes you, Steve...”

“...Shit man...” Sam said quietly over the phone, so quietly that he was almost drowned out by the ambient traffic noise of the Garden State Parkway.

“My guess is that based on what you've told me about your encounters with him, and also his potential mental state, along with the fact that he's been HYDRA's puppet, is that as soon as he's done with his missions, he's put on ice. There are signs of maintenance within his prelim blood work, which means there have to be facilities nearby to service him. They're probably scattered throughout the world, but there's probably one in D.C., maybe near where the Triskelion used to be.”

“I can start my search there,” Sam said, “you want me to wait?”

“I'm hoping Pierce's files can tell us more about where he had Bucky stored, sorry Steve, I don't mean to sound insensitive-”

“It's fine,” Steve grimaced, waving away Bruce's apology while swallowing his own discomfort at how _clinical_ Bruce sounded when was talking about Bucky being stored away like some inanimate object to be used later.

“But maybe it'll give us a lead as to where at least one of these facilities are,” Bruce shrugged, “and hopefully some more information about how to reverse the memory wipe Bucky's gone through.”

“We can undo it?” Steve lowered his arms, having crossed them while the others were talking.

“Maybe? I'm not a neurologist, but I can at least use some of what I know about the super soldier project and it's permutations to try to reverse it,” Bruce said, looking a little sheepish and rubbed his arm absently. Steve knew that while he had come mostly to terms with the Other Guy, or the Hulk, in him, sometimes his mind still wondered at the possibilities if he had not had the Hulk in him.

“I know Tony's gonna want the full explanation, but if you want, I can explain it to you later. I kind of want to move Bucky into the room over so that he's comfortable...”

“Comfortable?” Tony asked, confused.

“Well...” Bruce bit his lip, looking a little uncomfortable, “he's been sedated before. At least judging by the needle marks along his wrist. They've mostly faded for the past year, but the initial tissue swab of that area picked up trace amounts of sedative, though I don't know how much.”

It took every ounce of self-control and effort on Steve's part to not punch something in frustration and torment. How could- How- This was Bucky! This was- He blew out a quiet long sigh and closed his eyes, rubbing them before opening them again to see Tony looking determinedly away from him, his expression tight as if he was remembering something or giving him a moment of privacy. Bruce only pointedly look down at his phone and Steve realized that he had cracked the case – one that was touted as indestructible when he first brought it.

“...Sorry...” he apologized roughly.

“No worries, if you broke the phone, I would have called up Stark instead,” Steve could hear the lightness across the connection and smiled a little.

“I think it would be okay to bring out of the sedation and let him wake up naturally. It looks like he hasn't really slept much, or well, since he was last seen,” Bruce continued, “and I don't know, but if he's really taking the effort to search you out Steve, he's probably not going to run away after he wakes up.”

“Can I...can I sit with him?” he asked, a little horrified at how childish he sounded. Bucky had been there for him for so long and he now wanted to be there for him.

“Sure, but I need to talk to you before you do that, okay? Just...wait out here for a bit. Let me get him to the other room and get him comfortable. Tony, wanna help me out?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, sure,” Tony seemed to snap out of whatever funk he had fallen into before heading back into the lab-turned-room. It was a few seconds later that Steve realized he was still on the phone with Sam when he spoke up, his voice filling the empty hallway.

“You okay?”

“No...” Steve shook his head, “but...I will be I think...”

Sam snorted, making it sound like an electronic blast for a second, “Hang in there, Steve. But you don't need me telling you that; you'll do it for him.”

“Yeah...stay safe, okay?”

“You too,” Sam replied, “hey, tell Doc Banner and Stark that I'm billing them for the trip mileage. Making me turn around in the middle of the Garden State. Good thing I'm close to the border instead of near the city.”

Steve laughed lightly before hanging the phone up and putting it back into his pocket. He turned back to watch through the observation window as Bruce directed Stark around, seemingly unhooking machines and the like and saw Stark moving off to the side to read something on one of the projections before talking to Bruce as the two of them worked in tandem. There was something tight in Tony's expression along with the looks he shot towards him through the observation window even though he could not see him. Finally the two wheeled the bed across the lab and into what was probably a guest bedroom attached to the lab, leaving Steve to stare at the mostly empty lab.

The three dimensional imaging of Bucky's brain along with the notes still hovered in the air, but Steve only stared past it. He had promised to help his best friend...but how did one help someone who had been systematically tortured and turned into a killing machine for seventy years?

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Thanks for those who have alerted, favorites, given kudos to this fic – you guys rock. I promise this fic is not all angst – just a lot of drama with healthy doses of action coming soon!

 


	3. Chapter 3

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 3_

 

It was about twenty minutes later that Bruce waved him into the lab, Tony not so subtly leaving by awkwardly saying something about suit calibrations and the like. There was the shadow of a haunted look on his friend's face that Steve found puzzling, but figured he would ask him later. He glanced over at a second door that was closed, knowing that it was where Bucky had been moved to, but Bruce gestured for him to approach the floating images and projections that he had up at the other end of the lab.

“Most of what I could find from the leaked files about Bucky is still heavily redacted,” Bruce started without preamble, “I mean in this digital age and stuff you would figure that there be more notes on him, especially since he's been activated and put back in cryo each time, but this tells me that either the files were all on paper and not digitized, or-”

“Only certain people knew where he could be found...” Steve finished for him. He had read the thin folder Natasha had given him about a year ago, read it so many times, upside down, right-side up to the point where he memorized every single little detail. There were sparse, blank, and too had redacted black lines drawn in it. The images were blurred, grainy, clearly rare photos taken of his friend in the years that he had been the Winter Soldier.

Bruce nodded before coughing lightly, “Listen, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but when you're researching the super soldier serum and stuff like that...you tend to learn a few things that you really didn't want to learn. You learn that there are certain things not to be kept on notes and only in your head because it's too dangerous in the wrong hands.”

“Blonsky,” Steve stated and received a confirming nod from Bruce.

“Amongst others,” he murmured and Steve understood he was also talking about General Ross. So far, Ross had not even gone after Bruce even though he clearly had been on TV news a few times since New York, but he also figured it was SHIELD who had been protecting Bruce. Now, with SHIELD gone, every one of them knew that Bruce was vulnerable again and took pains to make sure that he was safe, hidden, no Hulk in sight for the pat year. If Bruce complained about people coddling him, hiding him, he did not say anything, but Steve got the impression that Dr. Banner was far more grateful for their efforts than thinking it was something otherwise.

Even though he had told Fury a year ago at the safehouse to expose all of SHIELD's and HYDRA's secrets, he was also practical and cynical enough to know that  _most_ secrets had been leaked. There were certainly still secrets hidden, secrets kept in the minds of others, secrets not kept digitally. Whatever Natasha had found and given to him in her file at Fury's gravesite, he had learned later was  _not_ part of the SHIELD files, even though they probably had agents in Kiev where she had apparently called in a few favors.

“The notes I was able to compile along with the stuff you gave me keep mentioning something about a Room of sorts. Room with a capital 'R'.”

“Related to this?” he waved at the imaging of Bucky's brain.

“Probably, I don't know, but they keep mentioning Room. I want to ask Natasha about it, but there's no way of contacting her,” Bruce shrugged and Steve nodded. She had meant it when she said she was going off-grid, to find a new identity. Though he knew that she was more than likely alive somewhere in the world, he had not heard from her since she had left Fury's gravesite. Sometimes he would worry about her whenever there was a lead on Bucky's whereabouts that he was following, or when Maria gave them a mission to take down a HYDRA cell. The only thing he knew was that she still alive somewhere, keeping an eye on them – after all, who would be able to take out a room full of guards well in advance to let them slip into at least two HYDRA bases in the past year?

“Anyways, that's not what I wanted to talk to you about,” Bruce waved a finger across and several screens zipped by before settling on one that was chock full of text-lines. “I'm not a neurosurgeon, but when you're doing super soldier serum research, you kind of have to pick up on several fields because of what the serum does to your body. Bucky clearly had some variation put into him, probably by Zola like you said.” He showed him another image of what looked like DNA strands.

“This is yours,” Steve stared in slight fascination with what his DNA looked like, all sequenced out, “this is Bucky's. There are differences in the telomeres and codings, not enough for me to try to replicate the serum since it's actually unique to each individual-” He brought up a third strand, “That's mine by the way...”

Steve nodded absently as he absorbed the information and did note that there were some dark and light spacings in all three. He was not surprised to see that Bruce's looked radically altered, having used radiation upon his own self, but surprisingly it looked a little like his and Bucky's.

“Like I was saying, what I'm speculating is that when HYDRA found him, they either knew that Bucky was experimented on, or discovered that fact because of what they did to his arm.”

“What?” Steve blinked.

Bruce waved away the DNA screen and brought up digital rendering of Bucky's skeletal structure, his fingers moving this way and that before zooming into the where Steve could see a clear break where his best friend's arm was missing. “They chopped his arm off.”

Steve paled and felt sick as he stared at the bone. It did not look like it had been sliced off, and in fact looked like it had been broken before someone had sheered off part of the bone and used the remaining flesh and tissue to create a sealed wrap around the bone-

“The marks are very faint, and very old, and I almost didn't catch it until I was looking over the attachment areas between the metal and whatever was left of his shoulder,” Bruce looked at him in sympathy before pointing out the very, very faint marks. “My guess is that they were trying to see if whatever Zola did would be able to regrow limbs or something. Looks like it sort of did before maybe it stopped and they decided to move on.”

“...Move on...?” he did not realize how faint his voice had become until Bruce's hand on his shoulder made him blink again.

“You okay? We can do this later-”

“No,” Steve shook his head, his voice rough, “tell me now because I don't want to hear it later.”

Bruce gave him an inscrutable look before nodding, “Okay. What does this have to do with his brain is what I'm speculating, okay? Just speculation. We don't really know what happened and I get the feeling Bucky won't be telling us any time soon.”

“Speculation, right,” Steve repeated, but it was hard. Speculation did not mean he was converting it to truth in his mind – the horror, the anger, the rage at what HYDRA did-

“Speculation,” Bruce repeated again, staring at him.

“...It's...hard...”

“It always is,” Bruce only smiled sadly before bringing the three-dimensional imaging of Bucky's brain to the forefront of all the images. “The brain is the most resilient organ we have in the human body. It never stops growing, never stops healing, and is the only organ with the capacity to learn, store, and filter everything we know about emotions, abilities, feelings, intelligence, everything. Your stomach can't do that, though it'll tell your brain when you're full or not to eat something that is poison. That's your brain doing it.”

“I'm  _speculating_ that when they realized Bucky's arm stopped regenerating, they decided to test the regeneration on a more pliable organ.”

Steve stayed silent, though he could hear himself grinding his teeth, trying to tamp down on the anger that was steadily rising in him.

“There are definitely scars there, the same faint ones that are on his arms, which means, they did this probably soon after or also at the same time when they were cutting his arm off. You don't cut into a healthy brain unless there's something wrong,” Bruce held the image of Bucky's brain with both hands, his fingers pinched together as he rotated it around by moving his arms. “They definitely messed with his amygdala – that's the part of the brain that has a primary role in the processing of memory, decision-making, and emotional reactions. It's located very deep within the lobe. Cutting through all of that dense tissue meant that they also messed with a lot of temporal lobe, too, though I haven't been able to figure out a lot of it. Like I said, I'm not a neurosurgeon.”

“You also said his frontal lobe was affected?”

“Probably the first time they did it to make sure that the brain was able to 'heal' so to speak,” Bruce twisted the image to show the front of Bucky's brain, “I've only read notes on 1940s and 50s psychological practices and barely paid attention to the sensationalized news, but from what I'm getting, the best way to treat patients back then was to either lobotomize them or electro shock them.”

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,” the movie had been disturbing to say the least, but he understood it on some level. Tony had only showed it soon after New York because he wanted a strange sense of vicious justice for what Loki had done.

“Something like that,” Bruce shrugged.

“You're saying they tried to lobotomize Bucky?” it was very hard to get that word out, to force himself to stay calm instead of throwing  _something_ , anything. “Why...?” he whispered but shook his head before Bruce could speak. He had answered his own question – the Bucky he knew would have fought, would have railed and tried anything and everything to escape again. Drugged up, even hazy, he had fought when Steve had found him in the factory while rescuing the 107 th and others. He had fought by only repeating his name, rank, serial number – had refused to give anything else. If the HYDRA scientists that had cut his arm off had now tried to perform more experiments on him, he would have fought and their answer was to try to cut all emotions from him, to make him pliant, and perhaps a drooling wreck like he had seen from that movie.

“These dark spots, not holes, but dark spots, tell me that they figured out the part of brain that made him not resist whatever they were doing afterwards. There are definitely marks in the temporal area where they were messing around with his amygdala, but there are also dark spots too.

Bruce released the imaging of Bucky's brain and rubbed his eyes tiredly, taking his glasses off and letting them hang around his neck, “I have to study those dark spots closer, but this is what I've found so far.”

“So his memories...?”

“I'm sure it's related to the dark spots, but from what I can guess, he doesn't exactly have retrograde amnesia – I mean, he's definitely functional and knows the lay of the land, so to speak, he knows how to speak, but what we do know about the processing of memory, both long term and short term, is still up for grabs.”

“He said...he said he knew me...”

Bruce nodded, “And that's what's puzzling.” He gestured to the dark spots that dotted parts of Bucky's brain, but were more deeply clustered in the frontal and temporal lobes, “The first thing I noticed was that those dark spots, they were shifting.”

“Shifting?”

The doctor winced, “Shifting isn't the best word I can come up with, but it's like something trying to make those dark spots go away, light up if you will, but failing. At the same time, his brain chemistry was all off; and in fact, like if someone had a cluster migraine all at once that wouldn't just go away.”

For someone who was not well versed in neuroscience, Steve was a little surprised at how knowledgeable Bruce was until he realized maybe the scientist had felt a similar type of 'migraine' whenever the Hulk was trying to force itself out from him. He had seen times when Bruce would pinch the bridge of his nose, as if to ward off an annoying headache. It had been apparent during the two times Loki had 'helped' them – the Trickster God always walking with more caution in the lab on the Helicarrier.

“It's definitely not apparent now since it's been several hours,” Bruce continued, “but it was definitely noticeable after we first scanned him. Surprisingly it's died down and you don't even see it anymore.”

“You think it was him trying to remember?”

“Maybe? Maybe not? I don't really know. But he did seem to be in a lot of pain when you and Tony carried him in here,” Bruce shook his head, “From whatever little I read about amnesia patients, sometimes some of them get headaches when they are around familiar things – that they're trying to remember. Sometimes, it takes them a little more to process and remember.”

Steve realized that it could very well be  _himself_ that had caused Bucky so much pain. That it was himself who kept breaking through whatever programming, whatever memories that wiped out who he was, and caused so much pain to his best friend to turn him into such a cornered animal who's only instinct was to lash out to  _stop_ the pain. He bit his lip, “I...shouldn't sit with him, should I?”

Bruce only stared at him before shaking his head, “The easiest answer is no, you shouldn't sit with him because you know you might be the one causing that pain. But the other answer is yes, because you  _don't_ know if you're causing the pain or if Bucky is truly remembering. Like I said, those dark spots, they're the key to this and it could be either or-”

“Or both,” he interrupted.

“-that's a bridge we have to cross at a later time,” Bruce said, “But you should because he's your friend.”

“What if-”

“Even if you think you're the cause of the pain he's been feeling, just remember,  _he came to you for help_ .”

“...Yeah...” that was not really comforting, but at the same time, he tried to wrap himself around it instead of speculating that it was he who had really caused Bucky to snap. He had been willing to let his best friend beat him to a pulp, to die for him because maybe, maybe he would come back then. But Bucky had stopped and perhaps that was some consolation – some hope that his best friend was trying to work  _past_ the pain.

Bruce waved away the images and Steve heaved a heavy sigh, “Thanks Doc.”

“Don't thank me,” Bruce shook his head, “it's the least I can do.”

He understood the implication that Bruce wanted to know more about what happened to Bucky, wanted the knowledge – wanted to know how he could fix himself in the long run. Even though Bruce accepted the Hulk as a part of him, Steve knew that there would always be a part of Bruce that yearned for a normal life, a life where he could spend the rest of his days with Betty. He had only met Betty once before she had been whisked away to an undisclosed safe house by Agent Coulson and even that had been on Bruce's insistence. It was clear that Bruce had been and was still so ashamed of what happened, of putting her at so much risk.

“Oh, and don't worry about the noises from the basement,” Bruce grinned tiredly as the two of them walked to the entrance, Steve detouring to where Bucky was now staying and palmed the door open.

“I understand,” they all understood that there were times when Bruce was so stressed that he needed to unleash the Hulk and beat the crap out of something. But before permanently residing in the Tower, he was a danger to whatever community or town he was in, now, Tony had built a specific Hulk-buster unit to help Bruce and sometimes, they heard angry roars or minor tremors that rang through the building. Those were the days that the Avengers Museum was  _not_ open and all S.I. personnel who were not aware of Bruce's presence had been sent home for the day. With what had just happened, Agent Hill would have already kept everyone off site for the remainder of the day.

“Hey Doc,” Steve called out as Bruce opened the door, “thank you.”

Bruce only gave him a wan smile before leaving, and Steve turned back to open the door to the adjacent room. He stepped in as the waning sunset lit Bucky's room, bathing it in orange, red, and purplish hues. There was a spectacular view from his bed and Steve noted the faint tinting, indicating that it was opaque from the other side.

“Wish I had this view,” he muttered, even though he knew that the open loft he had been given at the Tower afforded him another great view, but pointed towards Brooklyn. He had been touched and surprised at Tony's thoughtfulness when he and Sam had packed their things and moved to the Tower – Sam given the second-highest room, Clint having the highest by virtue of his codename and the fact that he liked the helipad rooftop a lot.

From the tinted window, he could see bits of Brooklyn, but mostly downtown, Trade One's spire jutting high up, a gleaming monument to the resiliency and testament that the United States would never forget September 11 th , 2001. He could see the buildings that made up Chinatown, Town Hall, and Little Italy. Could see bits of Bryant Park and the Library, and just make out 14 th Street and Union Square.

Steve wished he could sketch the view he had and wished he had brought his sketchbook before noticing a pencil and a fresh sketchbook sitting on one of the end tables in the room. Shaking his head, he knew it had to be Stark who left it there, probably having appreciated the same view he had. A quick glance at Bucky's still form, almost unmoving save for the shallow rise and fall of his chest, told Steve that he was still unconscious from the sedatives. He did not really know how long it would be until Bucky woke up from them, but in the meantime, he could at least provide some normalcy that he sorely needed. Sketching by Bucky's bedside was nothing new for him – having done it once or twice when Bucky had defended him from bullies and occasionally got injured – and it was at least something Steve knew he could do to keep his mind off of what Bruce had just told him.

He sat down by one of the chairs near the window, next to Bucky's beside and started to draw.

* * *

He knew he had been sedated. He knew because he had felt it before, going into and coming out of the cold. That much he remembered and felt even when he was crawling out of the darkness, out of the muddled haze that he knew was from artificial sleep. Voices would be muffled in his ears, and he would be feeling pressure on his bare skin. That was one of the few...memories...he retained, one of the few things besides instinct that drove him.

But the anticipation of hearing those muffled voices quickly turned into puzzlement as he heard _nothing_.

Nothing except a faint scratching noise, uneven, sometimes long, sometimes short, sometimes harsh, sometimes soft. They were followed by the sound of something muffled then a tapping-dragged-across sound that was unfamiliar.

_There was someone else in the room_.

There was someone else in the room and he _knew_ it was not one of the voices that put pressure on parts of his skin; voices that made him instinctively lash out, the howl of pain that was not his own that followed-

He opened his eyes to a decidedly unfamiliar off-white ceiling, sunset-lit room that showed the familiar scenery of downtown New York and-

The pressure in his head bloomed right behind his eyes once more as he saw his once-target, still-his-target, no! Saw Steve Rogers – target – person-who-would-help-him – He had not realized he had half lifted himself from the bed, the whine of his mechanical arm harsh and grating until he froze, blinking as his targ- as Rogers looked up at him.

His eyes, they were blue.

_It was the first thing dames commented each time Steve was within their vicinity. How they giggled behind their hands as he walked, oblivious to the admiring looks he was getting from all of those who worked in the SSR bunkers_. _It had been the feature that he had tried to sell to the dames that he dated and suggested double dates with if they had a friend before they all shipped out. It was the only superficial thing he could sell the dames on with – they were not that interested in how large Steve's heart was, how kind and caring-_

Those eyes blinked, seemingly surprised, but did nothing else except stare at him for what seemed like a long moment. It was only the flick of the eyes going lower that he noticed his flesh-and-blood arm was shaking, rather violently and forcibly stilled it with a mental command as he watched the tar- watched Rogers warily.

He noted the pencil in hand as the source of the unfamiliar scratching sound that had alerted him to the unfamiliarity of what was in this room. He also noted that there was something akin to a drawing on the pad that his targ- that Rogers held in his lap, feet propped up, making him seemingly curl into himself. Judging by how detailed the sketch was, at least from his vantage point, the target, Rogers, had to have been curled up for a while now, cramped muscles and all.

It would make him easier to kill.

He analyzed several ways he could lash out, to use the pencil as a weapon, to using the window and what was clearly the height to his advantage. The bed itself was a weapon as were the sheets that covered him. His clothing would hinder his movement just a bit and he could feel from the whine and tactile feel of his arm that it needed maintenance. But he was at the Avengers Tower and would be able to easily procure the necessary tools to temporarily fix it. There was no sign of the shield that the target wore-

He blinked once more as his vision was obscured with a familiar-not-so-familiar hand shoving a pencil underneath his vision and could hear the counter whine of his arm, straining-

“...What...are you doing?” he could feel the words being dragged out of him, the pain blooming behind his eyes, growing ever stronger. It made him want to scream, for it to stop, that he would not ask for it again, that he would eliminate the target-

He did not know _why_ he was asking that question, did not know _why_ he did not just use the pencil that clearly was being handed to him to kill the targ-, to kill Rogers. He-

“Here,” the single word felt like a damn bursting open in his mind as he felt something digging deep, demanding that he _take_ it and be done with it. It hurt, like little hot knives and it was everything he could do to resist – though he did not understand _why_ – and forced himself to steady his breath. He could never show weakness, could never show fear, could never- He closed his eyes against the sight of the pencil, of the calloused hands that he knew, _knew_ , was Steve Rogers'. He could hear the mental howl of betrayal, that he should _never_ close his eyes against the enemy – _he says he's my friend! -_ and the too-loud sound of his arm forcing himself to lie back down on the bed.

Showing the relaxed guarded posture was one way of luring in a target, to kill the target quickly. To tear his neck apart and crack it like it was nothing, like a twig. He knew it had been done many times, the first lesson he taught. To whom he taught it to, he did not remember, but the pain was not as bad as before, if he wished it. He could still _feel_ his presence in the room, but could almost imagine that the pain behind his eyes was lessening, accepting that he was to kill his targ-, to kill Rogers-

He could sense the hand withdrawing along with the pencil and minutely relaxed – the weapon had been taken away, still there, but it did not sing to him to use it, to use it at that very moment. There were still other weapons in the room, but he was _glad_.

He heard the targ-, Rogers, shift and knew the soldier had uncurled himself from his drawing position. He had lost his opportunity then, for he knew the soldier had a rapidly healing advantage. He could easily still take him if he acted now-

“Thank you for pulling me out of the Potomac,” the target said, voice quiet.

He could not suppress the wince of pain as it felt like someone stabbed him in between the eyes. There was silence afterwards, followed by sounds of shifting, but he could still feel the target's, Rogers' presence in the chair next to the bed he was on.

“I'm causing the pain, aren't I?”

_“Ya think buddy?!_ ” the alien quip that he could almost  _ hear _ issuing from his mouth stayed where it was, silent, unspoken. He saw the brief image of running as explosions happened, a place of ozone, burnt forests, soot, the mad, mad laughter of his teammates in victory-

“I'm sorry,” the voice was so forlorn, so apologetic that a grunt issued from his mouth before he could stop it. He did not know where the sound came from, but somehow found comfort in such a noise. It was just a plain noise, like the hiss of pain, the anger that he had felt, the fury, the broken-

_ “Stop apologizing, Steve! It's not your fault! _ ”

There had been rain then, he was sure of it. Puddles of wet rain that they ran through because he wanted to visit his mother's grave even though the weather was forecasted to be torrential downpours. It had also been very sunny in the morning so he could at least forgive him for suggesting the visit.

He had not realized he had thrown the covers back and had pulled himself out of the bed until he found the cool walls of the room pressing against his back, his knees pressed up against him, the blanket wrapped around himself as he opened his eyes to the destruction he had wrought. The bed had splintered, broken, metallic things sticking out – more weapons he could use against the target – one of the legs on the chair missing, kicked and embedded into a wall-

He turned his head to see that the targ-, that Rogers' small corner had remained untouched.

His eyes, they were blue and they were concerned.

It was then that he also noticed the door to the room had been left half open, sparking metal and wires. The whine of sick metal made him look down at his arm to see bits of burnt wires sticking out from once pristine-smooth plates. He did not remember-

“Fugue,” the words tumbled like rusty nails from his lips as he clenched and unclenched his metal fist. He knew what it meant, what the definition was, a brief vague flash of fighting a different target who had 'fugued.' Fugue-state.

He closed his eyes once more, pressing himself against the corner and wall across the room from the targ-, from Rogers.

“I understand,” was the only reply he got and he hoped, prayed, wished, that was the only answer for a long time. He could think of so many ways to kill his target-

His head hurt and he knew those eyes were blue and they were concerned – somehow, he was glad.

* * *

** Author's Notes: **

This chapter was inspired by another one of Joss Whedon's creations,  _ Firefly –  _ in particular, “Ariel” where Simon does a brain scan of River's brain and discovers what they've done to his little sister. I was also inspired by the Bourne Trilogy of movies. Musical inspiration is the track “End of the Line” from  _ Captain America: The Winter Soldier _ .

To allay your worries – yes, Bucky is seriously messed up. Yes, there is a difference in POVs from Chapter 1 to Chapter 3. There is a  _ very _ noticeable difference when eventually he interacts with the other Avengers.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 4_

 

His eyes were closed.

His eyes were closed, but they were not asleep. His target was still awake, even through the steady, rhythmic, soft breaths.

This was a test.

_ “Was this a test?” _

_He wanted to laugh as his best friend looked so innocently confused at Colonel Phillips. He could see both Agent Carter and Howard stifling their laughter. Even the Commandos were resisting the urge to laugh and he only stepped forward, clapping a hand on Steve's shoulder. “Yeah, it was a test...”_

They were not uncommon, he knew that; he had to be tested once in a while, to ensure that his skills and his loyalty and targets were killed with precision. Why would they care for his loyalty? The statement had confused him, but it had been said by one of the scientists he remembered touching his skin, fitting the rubber mouthguard into his pliant jaw. He never saw that scientist again, that he was sure of in his hazy memories.

Night had long fallen and he had kept his eyes closed for the most part, seeing without actually seeing, to keep the headache at bay, to keep the pain from spiking. The sound of scratching had resumed as his targ-, as Rogers resumed whatever was sketching- the skyline no doubt – he knew Rogers sketched Central Park after that lucid dream. Even he was not immune to the magnificence of the skyline when he had first woken from the sedatives. Eleven months of watching his target, of moving about, never sleeping in the same place three days in a row; the skyline was still different from every angle.

Now, he knew his target- he knew Rogers to be vulnerable and he curled his hand into a fist. The dull-thick cotton-like feeling of the sedatives had long burned through him, leaving him dry-mouthed and thirsty. But thirst was only a distraction as was the hunger that was slowly gnawing at him. His targ- He closed his eyes as the headache grew in intensity, pressing the cool metal of his thumb against the sinus point in between his eyes. It bloomed back there, and he wanted to dig his fingers in, to rip it out so that he could not  _ feel _ it anymore – it hurt.

He could almost see himself screaming, lashing out, breaking everything, laughing until the pain was too much to handle, curling in upon himself, because he could not- Because he was- It  _ hurt _ . It hurt like the pain that he had felt, the fear, the anticipation that shook him, the trembling of muscles he could not control-

The scratching sound of pencil against paper had stopped a little while ago, and he had only opened his eyes just then to see that the target's eyes were closed, but was not asleep. It was a test, simple as that. It was a test and he was failing. It was a test and he was succeeding.

It was a test and he was so very confused. It was a test and the pain was spiking. He could easily take the broken metal of the bed and stab it deep into Rogers, make him feel it- He could use the sheets wrapped around himself to hang the target, to choke him to death- The air slowly running out of lungs he knew were very much like his own-

It was a test and he knew he was failing.

It was a test and he knew he was succeeding.

It was a test-

-and he could not breathe.

It was as if something had seized his lungs until he realized it had been himself, suppressing the pain, suppressing  _ everything _ to try to fight it – to tamp it down because  _ he could not stand to see his target, could not stand to see Rogers,  _ sitting so innocently, so naively with eyes closed in the same room as him – ready,  _ willing – stop putting yourself in such a vulnerable position! -  _ to die –  _ I'm with you until the end of the line! _ \- he could not die because-

He was his mission-

It was a test and he was-

He tore them apart, the sound of cloth shredding like it was wet tissue paper followed by two steps, a frantic frenetic screech of metal on metal; the sick whine of his arm-

The sweet, blessed relief of pain, actual pain that bloomed where his shoulder joint met the rest of his body on his arm as he smashed through a large tinted window and half of another metal door, followed by a very painful, thudding, concrete-plaster, open air- He twisted and landed metal arm first, absorbing the blow of his landing, bending his knees to absorb the rest of the impact and-

_ Breathe _ -

He remembered how to work his lungs. Remembered the cool, summer fresh air that tasted like the city-

_ Summers were always hot in New York, but this particular one was cooler than average. Not that he was complaining as he glanced at Steve, his friend looking healthier this summer than the last. There was still sweat plastered across his face, but it was not the red-faced exertion that sometimes scared him – that he knew could easily turn into heat-sickness. _

One lungful, two, three, continuous lungfuls of air and the pain that had been clawing at him, slowly, oh-so-slowly pulling tight, digging at him, forcing him- He breathed, one-two, in-out- Teeth gritted together as he fought to breathe, fought to inhale the summer-air,  _ home _ . Home.

_ Snap _ .

It was a test and he knew he succeeded.

It was a test and he had passed the first part.

Something inside of him loosened, a very, very small part, the pain still there, but it had not grown. It was not pressing down upon him, clawing at him, ripping at him. He could imagine it screaming – or had it really screamed? - could imagine it burning through him, but he kept himself breathing. The summer air. New York. Home.

“Well...guess I was right to keep the balcony there instead of removing it,” the sardonic voice above registered as his senses prickled at at least three new presences he felt, but he kept himself steady, still, a predator in wait-

His senses prickled as he felt the targ-, felt Rogers' presence join them and tensed. A predator ready to run- He had succeeded in his test – he was failing in his test – he needed to run-

This had been a bad idea, coming here in the first place-

“ _ Help me... _ ” the words had been spoken in the feverish pain, the haze of agony that had ripped through his skull, threatening to overwhelm him – it had overwhelmed him – insistent, forceful, demanding he finish his mission. “ _ You are my mission!” _ it had screamed, he had screamed, was still screaming.

“Steve, I don't think he's going to leave,” one of the presence that had not spoken sardonic said and he heard the soft insistent plea within that tone directed at him, even though he was clearly speaking to Rogers.

He dared not look back into those eyes, into his eyes. He knew they were blue, but he was...

_ “You're the perfect weapon, fearless, trained to perfection. We need you to train these whelps to the same perfection. Failure will be reflected upon your part. We need you to train them to be fearless-” _

He was...

“ _ You failed. Kill her.” _

_ And he did, snapping her neck with cool efficiency, her auburn hair falling forward as she dropped like a rag-doll. He knew that they wanted a lingering pain, to let the others that failure would not be tolerated, but he had trained them and did not settle for anything less than a short quick death. Fearless. _

He was not fearless, he was...afraid.

He knew it was a test and he had succeeded.

He knew it was a a test and he had failed.

The verticality of the drop was only two running steps away. The lingering pain would only last several seconds before there would be nothing. His neck would be snapped as efficiently as he had with that girl with the auburn hair. The girl with the red hair had survived, the boy with the brown hair had survived.

The man with the blond-brown hair had survived; his targ-, Rogers had survived. Because...

His eyes had been blue, had been swollen red with blood, and they had not been afraid. “ _ I'm with you, until the end of the line _ .”

His eyes were blue and they were concerned.

His eyes were blue and they were concerned and accepted him.

He did not deserve such acceptance and he did not know why. Acceptance was meaningless-

_ He didn't understand why Steve readily accepted everyone, except of course, the bullies who always picked on him; why would he accept someone who had all but ignored him being beaten up since they had met in first grade. He didn't understand why he had interfered in third grade – maybe he was sick and tired of seeing little Stevie Rogers, the weak kid with the asthma and all sorts of problems, being picked on. Maybe it was because of his younger siblings that had watched, Becca trying to stop it, begging him to stop them. He had stopped them. But he had not understood why he did it until out of the blue, as they were just kicking stones around, Steve had said that he thought he looked lonely and needed a friend. _

_That had confused him before Steve said that he wore his loner status proud, but would look at all of the others in groups and smile the fake smile he saw on his own mother's face from time to time – pretending to be a part of their group, never really part of them. The smile that said he was screaming inside, that he wanted someone to talk to, wanted a friend. Steve said that he did not get beaten up for him, but rather had made the mistake of telling the bullies to leave his siblings and him alone because his parents worked all day long in the factories._

_He had called Steve an idiot and said that he only fought them off because the boy would not shut up and mouth off about what was right or wrong. But he never left his side._

“He's going to stay like that for the rest of the night, err, early morning hours?” the sardonic voice spoke up.

“Just leave him be Tony,” he did not recognize the voice, quiet, calm, a little to calm at times, almost forced, but he did not know why it was so. It soothed him though, the hint of steadiness in that tone, however faint and however very little words the voice had spoken.

He did not have to turn around to  _ feel _ the worry that radiated from the targ-, Rogers', presence that mingled with the three others. He could feel their stares on him, judging, evaluating –  _ targeting him _ – but they made no other moves except for the almost-not-there sound of feet shifting across concrete, broken glass. The pain was bearable now, not stabbing into him like sharp knives that constantly demanded attention, demanded retaliation.

He lifted his arm from the ground, the whine of gears, of power still sickening in his ears – he would have to check it again, but not now – not with the sliver of relief that he had found.

“He'll be...he'll be fine...” he heard Rogers whisper and felt the brush of pain grow and ebb just as quickly as he felt his presence fade away, disappearing back into the Tower. The other three stayed for a few seconds before they too reluctantly headed back in, leaving him outside.

_ Snap _ .

He knew it was a test and he had passed once more and this time, there was a sense of minute relief.

* * *

Steve stared at the remnants of the ripped out door that used to be Bucky's room, the sparking of wires still hissing their live current. Part of the observation window glass to the science lab next door had been broken, saved by the grace of the plastic-like film that gave it its ability to tint, from completely shattering. He could hear the distant murmurs of a conversation going on below him, courtesy of the hole Bucky had tore through on his leap down to the penthouse floor before crashing through the balcony glass.

He wanted to think that it was his fault for startling Bucky, for staying in the room with him as a constant presence when it was clear that it was  _ he _ that had been affecting Bucky. But at the same time he knew what he had done, the deliberateness of staying when he could have clearly left. Maybe that would not have brought his best friend to what was the edge of madness – who clearly was fighting something within to stay the urge to kill him with his bare hands.

He had heard the whine of his mechanical arm time and time again, had seen Stark' frown before the quick mutter of how 'sick' it had sounded. He had realized that Bucky's arm was probably still in an unrepairable state, having left it like it had been since their fight in the Helicarrier. Bucky had clearly reset his dislocated shoulder, but now Steve wondered if it had been reset properly, judging by how much it trembled when he had first initially woken up from the sedative by propping himself up.

Had his friend even seen a doctor for the wounds he had given him, for wounds sustained when the Helicarrier crashed into the Potomac? Bucky had huddled in the corner after nearly destroying the room the first time, oddly leaving where he sat untouched, almost as if he could not bear to hurt him; even though he was more than likely not conscious judging by the 'fugue' comment he made before curling into himself. He had seemed to relax a little after Steve had made it a point to start sketching again, wondering if his friend was listening to the sound of his pencil on paper. He really had not much left to finish and so had been adding, erasing, and re-adding details for several hours past the sun setting until even his hand had started to cramp a little from wearing the pencil down to a nub.

Steve had only briefly closed his eyes, hoping to rest them when Bucky had all but bolted out of the room, crashing and tearing his way through broken metal, glass and concrete before breaking another one of Tony's balcony windows by leaping out and landing on the same balcony they had found Thor and Loki fighting back when he invaded New York.

He had not seen much of Bucky's expression, but he had seen a flash of fear, not directed at him, but almost a fear  _ for _ him – that something had tipped within Bucky, the internal war he was fighting was coming to a head. The noise had certainly woken up, or at least JARVIS had probably alerted the others, of what was happening. They had found him, still crouched where he had landed, an impact crater around him, unmoving and silent.

Steve had to reassure himself that Bucky was not going to leap off the balcony into open air with literally no other building in the direction he was facing that was close enough to land on without killing himself. If he had turned to the right, perhaps the rooftops of Grand Central Station would have resulted in some broken bones, but at least there would be no death. It had been hard speaking the words that he would be fine, feeling like his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth.

But apparently it had been the right thing to say, to walk away and leave Bucky there. He had felt tension that had been coiled around his friend drain away as he left.

Maybe he should have heeded his own advice and stayed away. Clearly he was the cause of this, no matter what Bruce said. It looked to be more than just extremely painful headaches that Bucky suffered in the past few hours seeing him and he did not want to cause his friend anymore pain than had already been done to him. He was not a torturer and this was clearly torture.

“JARVIS?” he called out tiredly, feeling more his ninty-seven years than actual age of twenty-seven.

“Yes Captain?” JARVIS replied politely, though a little distorted due to several wires that had been pulled from the ceiling when Bucky had ripped the metal door apart.

“Is...is he...” he trailed off as he glanced at where Bruce had the holographic monitors up hours earlier.

“He has settled into a meditative position, though near one of the corners to the door.. I believe he is minimizing his profile to any passing satellites or telephoto lenses that may be in the vicinity. However, he has not entered the building since,” JARVIS provided helpfully.

“And the files?”

“My decryption protocols have run into several firewalls that require more attention. I have already notified Falcon of the changes and he is aware of the delay,” JARVIS replied.

“Thanks JARVIS,” Steve felt so tired all of the sudden, the weight of actually seeing Bucky after a year of fruitless searches and now...

“Captain, Agent Hill, is requesting your presence within the penthouse,” JARVIS suddenly relayed and Steve nodded before pushing himself off of the door frame and headed to the elevator. He could have easily jumped down, using the hole that Bucky created, but it was rude.

He arrived a few seconds later and stepped out, noting that Bruce was sitting in one of the chairs that looked out towards the balcony, Hill perpendicular to him, but kept her head turned to her left to watch a shadow within a corner outside the balcony that Steve saw was Bucky. He was sitting crosslegged, silvery arm neatly hidden in the shadows when moonlight was clearly showing. He gave no indication that he sensed his presence except for the slight off-sounding whine of his arm that quieted seconds later.

“Drink?” Tony offered behind him and Steve turned to see him pouring three glasses, tilting a fourth one to him. All of them knew his serum-enhanced metabolism burned through alcohol, but he appreciated the gesture nonetheless and shook his head a negative.

“Hill,” he greeted, taking the couch opposite of her as Tony parceled out the other three drinks.

He expected her to take a sip before talking to him as Bruce and Tony had done so, Tony downing the whole thing in one gulp, but she only looked at him with serious eyes.

“I think the Winter Soldier's been programmed to kill you,” Hill stated bluntly, folding her hands in front of her.

Steve blinked, confused. The way she said 'programmed', “Come again?”

“Programmed, like a computer-”

“I got that part, but...how? Why? Can you even do that?” he still was not too sure about how computers worked, especially since Tony had tried to explain the intricacies within it, something about a mother-board - whatever that was - chips, which sounded like, well, potato chips, circuitry that made him think of the blinking lights on the Helicarrier turbine panel he had tried to help Stark repair.

“With the technology out there, no,” Hill shook her head, “with the secret technology out there? 0-8-4s and things SHIELD finds, maybe.”

“Maybe,” he echoed flatly and saw Stark shrug.

“I know the U.S. Government ran research into a 'psychic' division way back in the 1950s and 1960s when the Cold War was heating up with the Soviets, but it was kind of bunk and a failure at the end. There's a movie out there about it, 'The Men Who Stare at Goats',” Tony said, but Steve ignored his half-attempt at humor as did everyone else.

“It was never on record, at least in the files that were released a year ago,” Hill continued, “only because it involved one of our top agents. The Agent had apparently been programmed to kill Director Fury back in early 2000s.”

“I'm guessing the Agent was caught and killed?” Banner asked, taking a small sip of his drink. He looked haggard and tired and Steve had to briefly wonder how long did Banner stay as the Hulk and fight the Hulk-buster downstairs. He had not felt any vibrations during the last few hours, but it also did not mean that Banner was still angry. It also looked like he had not even gotten a wink of sleep if he had come up from the basement to his suite.

“Caught yes, killed no,” Hill said, “it seemed the Agent had been slowly trying to overcome the programming by being constantly in Director Fury's presence whenever possible. We only knew about the programming when the Agent confessed to her S.O. that it would have been easier to have left her in Sao Paulo instead of making a different call.”

“Wait a minute...”

“No way...”

“You have to be kidding me,” Steve noted that Bruce had his glass halfway to his mouth while Tony had leaned forward, staring at Hill with a expression of open shock. Even he was surprised at Hill's words as the implication set in and he could only let his mouth hang open in surprise.

“Natasha?” he murmured and Hill shrugged.

“It wasn't my call,” she said and Steve closed his mouth, frowning as he absorbed what she had said.

Hill had always taken a harder line than Fury during the year and half he had worked for SHIELD. He had heard the rumors and scuttlebutt from various personnel that Hill was efficient as the second-in-command of SHIELD, but also a hard-nosed person who was very by-the-book. She fielded information, collated mission, did everything Fury did, but whenever missions had gone awry, she easily cut her losses and found different avenues to get the information she needed. He had heard that she had loosened up some of her by-the-book rules after Fury had faked Agent Coulson's death to get the Avengers to work together, seemingly finally understanding what it meant to push others in directions that were needed, but she still tried to keep everyone on the moral path. That usually meant traitors were not given a second chance.

He could imagine what she had thought about Natasha attempting to kill Director Fury.

“Barton must have either convinced Fury that she was worth the effort or he had seen something in her, but it was a while, still is, until the day Fury died, that Romanov fought her programming.”

Silence fell amongst the group as they realized the implication of her words. That Romanov had been, was still, fighting whatever 'programming' within her. Steve remembered her muttering for Fury not to die on her, not to do this to her. He had thought it was because the two had a close friendship, but perhaps it was something more – maybe Fury's presence had been driving her to fight against whatever command she had been given? Or perhaps it was something else? There had been an ease between the two that one usually attributed to friendship, perhaps even a little bit of familial surrogate father-daughter relationship that Steve had noted, but had it been a lie? A cover? Fury and Natasha were easily the best spies he knew in the business. They both knew how to lie, how to pull the strings, how to say the right words, affect the right emotions to draw in their targets before stealing all of their secrets.

He inwardly shook his head – no, Natasha had clearly proven to him that she was trustworthy, after all they had been through. He knew she had her secrets, heck, he had his own, but this?

“How...how do you know she had been...programmed?” Bruce's expression was pinched as he set his glass down, staring at it with some disgust. It was clearly not digust over the drink, but rather what was being said.

“Our interrogation methods are usually behind one-way windows, usually a trained agent sitting in the room asking the questions relayed through an earpiece. Barton was the one who brought her in instead of killing her so he was the one asking her the questions.”

“And you and Fury were watching through the other window,” Steve said but Hill shook her head.

“I wasn't Fury's second yet. I was however, watching through the security room as Lead of STRIKE Team Alpha,” Hill said and Steve started quietly at the revelation of who had been in charge of the fabled STRIKE Team Alpha. STRIKE Team Delta to whom Brock Rumlow had been in charge of along with the other STRIKE Teams Beta and Charlie had long been modeled after Alpha – an elite unit of para-military combat personnel within SHIELD. He had only estimated that Hill was in her mid-thirties, which meant she had to be in her early twenties when she was in charge of STRIKE Team Alpha.

He saw the slight prideful smile in her eyes before they turned more serious, “Fury broke protocol and deactivated the window's tint. That's when Romanov showed off her skill set. Killed Fury's second, and drew a gun on the Director. Barton had her in his sights, but she didn't shoot the Director.”

“I thought she was waiting for Barton to kill her, was actually expecting it, really,” Hill hunched forward, though she flicked a quick look at the shadows where Bucky still sat outside, unmoving. “She easily tore through the glass, tore through Richard to get to Fury, and the only thing she did was point a gun at his head and ask why would he expose himself in such a way so that an assassin could get to him.”

Hill shook her head, “I'll never forget what Fury said. He said because he believed in her, trusted her. It isn't well known outside of Fury's circle, but Barton was recruited by Fury and was Barton's S.O. so the two trusted each other. I figured that if Fury trusted Barton to make the right call, even if it was a different call, then he trusted Romanov.”

“Those are the words of either a naïve man who expects that it'll stop a bullet, or the words of someone who knows something,” Hill shook her head, “I never found out, but what I do know is that Romanov gave us a target, The Red Room.”

“That wasn't on any of the files JARVIS flagged and data-mined since Romanov uploaded them,” Stark pointed out.

“That's because it's never officially existed in SHIELD's missions,” Hill smiled bitterly, “side project of Fury's, Barton's, and Romanov's. I only knew about it when Fury appointed me his second a few years later, coordinating the official SHIELD missions with side ones that enabled the two to go Red-hunting.”

“That doesn't explain how you know Bucky was programmed-”

“Because that wasn't the first time Romanov tried to kill Fury. She had a skill set that was invaluable to us and also deadly if used against us. She has ranked the highest in all of SHIELD's espionage scores.”

“So you thought she was still making a play for Fury, just waiting, biding her time,” Banner rubbed his chin as he sat back, “and she probably did, right?”

“Every single time she was reporting to the Director,” Hill shook her head a little, “overt the first few times, but slowly masking her reactions behind her skill set over the years. You can't see it now unless you knew what you were looking for.”

“Barton, he knew right?”

“He knew,” Hill confirmed, “he watched and he believed that she was getting over her programming, even though I thought she was getting better at hiding it. It could have been both, but I wasn't convinced until we actually found proof of the Red Room and destroyed it. We got a bunch of their notes about the experiments they were running and whatever else they were doing.

“The note were concise and spoke of years and years of experiments on implantation of thoughts, false memories, of data and information. They were trying to create specific soldiers, assassins, politicians, anyone and everyone – tailor made, but the best they could do was just program targets. However, it also spoke of degradation of these commands after a while. They aren't specific and are mostly vague, but they did note that sometimes the programming got corrupted, like a harddrive being corrupted after a period of long use, abuse, or just generally too much clutter, not enough to format or do anything with the harddrive itself.”

“The tech we found was only useful to a certain extent; it looked like they had a moment's notice before we raided the facility and tried to destroy as much as they could. Most of it was cataloged and sent up to the Slingshot.”

“Slingshot?”

“Program designed to send advance tech that is otherwise too dangerous to high orbit around the Earth,” Steve supplied to Bruce's question.

“It's fake,” Hill said and Steve blinked, staring at her in surprise, “I wouldn't be surprised if most of that tech now was in HYDRA's hands, or out in the internet. Slingshot was designed to give people within SHIELD who didn't have clearance or accidentally knew about it a peace of mind.”

Steve drew in a steady breath and let it out slowly, a little more than angry at how much he had been _lied_ to, even after all that had happened.

“We had been trying to reverse engineer it, partially to help Romanov, partially because we thought it would be easier to make enemy spies more agreeable to telling us what we needed to know without having to resort to torture.”

“That's a form of torture,” Stark bit out quietly, but Steve picked up at the anger hidden deep within.

“It's all useless now,” Hill shrugged again, giving both of them looks that said that she understood they were angry, but to her it was water under the bridge, “but we did learn about the varied habits when programming broke down. It seems like most of the time, they weren't successful, but the times they were, their subjects more often than not, had their minds fried.”

“Not, literally, right?”

“No, but they did end up in mental institutions,” Hill said, “we visited a couple of patients who were on the list of experimental subjects. Fury wanted to know more about the Red Room's programming and how Romanov factored in.”

“But Natasha is...sane, at least for an assassin,” Stark picked his glass up, but set it back down with a face of disgust when he realized he had downed it all before. He took a quick glance back at the bar, but made no other moves to get up and get himself another shot.

“And the only one...until he showed up,” Hill jerked her head towards where Bucky was sitting. She reached out her hand and pushed the glass across the long coffee table, towards Steve. “Your friend's been programmed, Captain, and it's definitely Red Room work.”

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

My version of the fabled Red Room is going to be different than the comics – to be honest, I actually don't really remember most of what I read regarding the Red Room, except that it involved Bucky, Natasha, and a few others (it's been a while). I'm really hoping that Marvel will introduce the Red Room with the newly announced Black Widow movie (at least on IMDb), but for now, this is my version. The Red Room is more like Bourne's Project Treadstone and Blackbriar than the actual Red Room.

Also, I read somewhere that a screenshot of Bucky's Smithsonian exhibit wall in the movie states he's the oldest of four siblings or something like that – so I kind of put into a flashback a mention of one of those siblings, Becca.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 5_

 

“Could HYDRA have been funding the Red Room then?” Steve took the glass Hill had slid towards him and held it, but did not drink it. He certainly appreciated the gesture, his head spinning with this new information about Romanov, about Bucky potentially having the same programming as her, everything.

“Not a far-reaching guess given that they've all but incited the Cold War,” Hill said, folding her hands together in a very Fury-like posture. “We know that there are definitely other Red Room cells, after Romanov and Barton destroyed the first one and based on the ramblings of the others. But we couldn't spare the time to search for them, not as extensively after, well, after Thor showed up really.”

Tony snorted softly and looked troubled for a moment shaking his head at something private before grabbing his glass and walking over to the bar. Steve did not need to look back to hear the clinking of cabinets and glass before Tony stalked back and thumped a large decanter of amber-looking liquid down onto the table and set another glass in front of Hill. He then downed another shot of the liquid that Steve thought smelled like really good scotch.

“Steve, based on what we know about Romanov's programming and based on what I've seen so far with the Winter Soldier-”

“Bucky,” Steve interrupted quietly. He would never refer to his friend as the codename given to him by HYDRA. Everyone else could call him the Winter Soldier, but to him, he was and always will be Bucky.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Hill compromised easily, but still leveled him with a look, “there are signs he's fighting the programming from within.”

“He's destroyed at least the annex room and punched holes through a couple of windows,” Tony absently gestured to the penthouse area and vaguely where Bucky still sat. Steve could not tell if his friend was sleeping or awake, having blended far better into the shadows than he thought possible. He only knew Bucky was still there was the small glint of metal on his finger tips from the faint moonlight.

“He hasn't tried to kill any of you, yet,” Hill shrugged, unfolding her hands and taking the empty glass and rolling it around her palms.

“Wait, huh?” Bruce leaned forward, “but I thought Steve would have been the target? Sorry...”

Steve waved off the apology, “Was about to ask the same question myself.”

“For a threat assessment, since Captain Rogers moved in here, every single Avenger and ex-SHIELD personnel in here is considered collateral damage if Sergeant Barnes was actually targeting him,” Hill said, staring at all of them with a serious look, “it was how Romanov came onto SHIELD's radar in the first place. We figured out that her target had been a double agent KGB spy who was selling secrets to a third party, except the KGB spy was a school teacher.”

“Oh geez,” Tony breathed out quietly at the implications of her statement and Steve grimaced a little at the unspoken collateral damage Natasha must have inflicted to get to her target.

Hill, to her credit, looked a little queasy at the mention of Romanov's past, but managed to push aside her discomfort, “We didn't figure out the Red Room connection until Romanov was caught and brought in by Barton and the whole Red-hunt started. We had files and mission reports on people who had been trained like Romanov. Sometimes they would eliminate a single target in a crowd, sometimes they would take the crowd with them. It depended on the circumstances and how they needed to stage the accident or crime scene.”

“So Bucky wasn't targeting me?”

“He is,” she shook her head and glanced to her left before looking back at them, “but he's definitely fighting it. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation with him sitting there.”

“So him kind of breaking glass, breaking furniture, breaking pretty much everything is him fighting the urge to kill Steve?” Tony looked unsure, “but how...how does that work? I mean, don't they just get a target name and do what they want to do?”

“Tony, you've been watching too many spy movies. This isn't James Bond or Jason Bourne-”

“Sure as hell is starting to feel like the Bourne movies,” Tony muttered to Bruce's protest and Steve glanced between them but saw Tony wave an absent hand at him. “Those are movies you  _ don't  _ need to see Cap. A little too close to the subject matter.”

Steve frowned, but looked at Bruce as he shook his head. “Agent Hill, could I guess that Bucky's 'programming' so to speak, explain why he doesn't remember anything? I mean, it could explain why his brain has dark spots, especially in the lobes I showed you earlier.”

“Maybe?” Hill shook her head, “the notes we found didn't go into detail, and Romanov was reluctant to speak of her time in the Red Room when it wasn't exactly relevant. Barton probably knows more, but he's been incommunicado even before SHIELD went down.”

“I told him he had a place here if he got sick of SHIELD,” Tony frowned, “he didn't have to up and quit like that. I mean, he liked the top floor for crying out loud. Would have had a nice place in security detail for him too at S.I.”

“Barton does what he wants,” Hill shrugged, “as for your question Doctor, I'm not sure. It didn't seem like Romanov experienced memory loss, just talked about an insistent pain that was like drilling into her brain to kill Director Fury. The first few times, she stopped herself by destroying equipment and things near the Director. The less things she destroyed as time went on, the better they thought she was getting better.”

“I'm sensing a 'but' in there,” Tony poured himself a half measure from the decanter and sipped it instead of throwing it all back.

“Fury wanted to try something,” Hill shook her head and Steve understood the feeling of resignation she had whenever Fury did something reckless. Even though the Director was technically dead to everyone, he had a feeling that Fury was always in contact with Hill and probably with Coulson, planning their missions against HYDRA, protecting the world even though SHIELD did not exist anymore.

“He let himself be vulnerable to see what Romanov would do,” Hill's lips flattened, “and she took out at least half of STRIKE Alpha before we managed to subdue her. Almost even took out Nick himself with that reckless stunt of his.”

“So she wasn't getting better?” Bruce asked.

“She didn't kill any members of STRIKE Alpha if you want to call that getting better, but she did give a lot of them an early retirement or promotion to desk work.”

Steve chewed his lower lip as he glanced to his right where Bucky still sat in the shadows, unmoving. He could almost imagine his friend staring through the windows, evaluating him like a target. It was disconcerting to say the least, especially since they had watched each others' backs since childhood. He understood what Hill was saying and knew that his previous attempt to close his eyes, to rest them had obviously agitated Bucky. His friend must have fought the need to kill him while his eyes were closed, a predator seeing his prey falter in his vigilance and thus plowed through everything to break the urge or even to get away.

But the fact that Bucky had stayed, had not run away meant something to him. Hill clearly saw Bucky as a predator, lying in wait to ambush him on the pretense of asking him for help, staying close, even generally acting like he was trying to fight the Red Room programming. Steve wanted to say he saw otherwise – that Bucky had  _ asked _ and pleaded for help, that he was trying so hard to break free from whatever demons had plagued him, that he was remembering enough to know that he was an ally. But at the same time he also knew that there was still the killer instinct in his friend, seemingly burned into his brain because of some technology that enabled the Red Room assassins to never forget their target.

“What did Romanov say after she had killed her targets? I mean, was there relief?”

“Steve-”

“I'm not saying what you think I may be saying, Tony, Bruce,” he glanced at his friends, both whom had slightly horrified looks on their faces, “I just want to know if after they killed their targets, the pain, whatever's driving them to do that is gone?”

“That...I don't know,” Hill grimaced, “sorry...I...we, never really asked. I mean, I don't know and I didn't ask Fury if he had asked...”

“Would Coulson know?” the last he had heard from Natasha was three months ago and that was only through a message left to Coulson before she had disappeared off the grid once more.

“I can ask,” she replied with a small nod, “he knows about Romanov's past and Red-hunting. I think that's what she's doing right now with her limited resources.”

“Makes sense,” Tony shrugged, “especially with her covers blown.” He downed the rest of his third glass and poured himself a fourth before gesturing with it to where Bucky still sat in the shadows, “So what do we do about him?”

“He asked for my help and I'll be damned if I don't give it to him,” Steve glanced over at Tony who held his hands up as if to ward away any undue hostility.

“We get that, but seriously, if what Hill says is true, I'm just saying, if he's going to end up gunning for you, it means either we have to sedate him so all of us can get sleep or we figure something out.”

“Don't look at me, we had guards on Romanov,” Hill shook her head.

“I can take watch,” Steve volunteered, looking at his friends and noting that they all looked tired, worn, and strung out. He had stayed up for far longer during the war, even during the Chitauri invasion three years ago after the portal had been closed. The primary excuse had been to ensure that his fellow New Yorkers were not harmed by the leftover weaponry, but mostly to ensure that Tony was doing fine after nearly dying sending the nuke into space.

“Steve-”

“I've done it before,” he set his jaw, staring at Bruce who looked worried, “I won't make the same mistake again.” He looked at the others before Tony nodded reluctantly.

“JARVIS can point out where the coffee beans are for a fresh pot,” he pushed himself up from the couch, taking the decanter with him after Bruce shook his head a negative for a refill and Hill declined by covering her empty glass. “Whiskey's behind the bar, in the back for some Irish Coffee if you really want it.”

“I'll be in my office if you need anything,” Hill cracked a small smile as she stood up and stretched, “can't really sleep anyway, not after this. I'll put out some feelers to some of the other former SHIELD agents who may know more about the Red Room.”

“Thanks Maria,” Steve said as Bruce also got up, finishing his glass before setting it in the empty sink next to where Tony left his. He didn't say anything except to nod a goodnight and headed into the elevator that Steve noted was going down. All of their suites were upstairs from the main floor penthouse and he had a feeling that Bruce needed to work out some more steam as the Hulk downstairs.

Silence reigned in the penthouse, broken by the sounds of the never-sleeping New York City that filtered through the shattered windows as Steve finally hunched over and stared at the half-filled glass that Hill had left for him. Drinking it would be a waste. Not drinking it would also be a waste. He knew he did not necessarily have to keep 'watch' not with JARVIS around, but he also knew that there was the potential of Bucky not reacting well to no one keeping an eye on him.

He sighed quietly and scratched the back of his neck before deciding to push the drink aside and reached over to the side of the couch he was sitting on. Pulling out one of his doodling notepads and a box of pencils, he settled himself down again and started to sketch.

It was a habit he had adopted when he was very young, to keep a pad of paper and a pencil on him; almost like a reporter kept a notebook and pen on hand. Sometimes it was the scraps of newspapers that was discarded to the side, sometimes it was the gummed notepad that one of the chorus girls had picked up for him. He thought he had kept it mostly to himself, keeping a spare pad and box of pencils, 4H to 4B one in his regular military bag, one in his bedroom suite, and one in the penthouse – because mostly for the spectacular view it offered – but it seemed that his habit had not gone unnoticed after he found the pad and pencil in Bucky's room.

Steve was still not too sure if the sounds of his sketching calmed Bucky down because it was familiar to him, but at the same time he could easily extrapolate that his best friend had not even moved one inch during the times he had sketched. It was something very different than the Bucky he remembered before and during the war. His friend would always peer over his shoulder and try to see what he was drawing, always nosing about to the point where Steve sometimes hid his sketches or sketched whenever he thought Bucky was not awake in the dingy apartment they had shared for a couple of years before Bucky had enlisted.

He absently reached over and flicked on the lamp next to the couch, dimming it automatically to not blind himself with the light, but at least give him enough to see what he was sketching in the inky early morning hours of New York City. He settled himself in for what was probably a very long night once more.

* * *

Tony knew he was not a super soldier or had any special serum running through him in order to stay awake past the forty-eighth hour – even he had his limits. But when the morning lights cracked through the shades in his bedroom chased by the sounds of distant morning traffic on the FDR, he had all but given up on sleep and tossed the blankets aside.

“JARVIS time?” he scrubbed his eyes as he wandered to the bathroom and cleaned up.

“Five forty-three in the morning sir,” JARVIS replied, “it has only been three and half hours since you retired, twenty-eight hours since you had last slept.”

“Yeah, let's just keep that to ourselves, hmm?” he muttered absently a few minutes later after his quick shower and put on some comfortable clothes. “No meetings right?”

“Not for today, sir. You told me to clear your schedule when Sergeant Barnes arrived yesterday.”

“Yeah,” he vaguely remembered doing that as he had tinkered with the Mk. III after finding out from Bruce just how messed up Steve's long-lost best friend was from whatever HYDRA had been doing to him. He had called Pepper and talked to her, mostly about nothing, but wanting to hear her voice for reassurance. He could not imagine finding Rhodey or even Pepper in such a state and was so grateful that she at least understood what he had been rambling about.

But that phone call had been cut short when JARVIS had alerted him of the Winter Soldier's erratic behavior before he had dashed up from his workshop in time to see him plowing through the penthouse glass onto the balcony once more.

“Crap...” he realized that he had forgotten to call Pepper back and tell her that everything was fine as he opened the door and stepped out to his suite.

“I notified Ms. Potts as soon as the situation seemed under control sir,” he grinned at JARVIS' reply to his unspoken worry.

He crossed the suite and headed to the elevator, taking it down and exiting to see Steve still on the couch where he had left him last night, drawing pad out and seemingly hard at work sketching.

“Hey,” he called out as he headed to the espresso machine and made himself a double shot, feeling the buzz immediately wipe away the slight fuzzy stuffed-in-the-head feeling he always got after drinking one too many scotches and whiskey. It was the higher quality he had dug out last night, or a few hours ago, depending on how he wanted to figure it out in his head.

“It's-”

“Nearly six,” he said, “rise and shine Cap.” He saw Steve swivel his head towards the mechanical clock he had one the wall, an old fashioned cuckoo one he had rebuilt a while ago, but didn't exactly fit into the décor of his Malibu home. He had shut the cuckoo part off when he had rebuilt it, remembering how annoying it was growing up with it in his parents' house.

He saw Steve blink, rubbing his eyes a bit before looking outside as if he could not believe that the sun was already rising before tracking to the corner where the Soldier had all but tucked himself away in after everything. He was still managing to keep himself in the shadows, but his silvery metal arm revealed his location easily and if Tony squinted from where he was, he thought he could see the man's slightly unnerving dead-eyed, blank gaze focused on him – or rather Steve who was sitting on the couch in front of him.

Even from his vantage point, he could tell that Steve was the one who was emotionally wrung out, exhausted, and generally miserable. His normally stoic appearance and professional demeanor was gone, replaced by a hunched look that Tony was too familiar with, anger and blame warring inside him that conflicted with helplessness of a request. Tony had a pretty good idea that Steve wanted to help, but did not know how to go about helping his best friend when clearly the Winter Soldier seemed to lose all coherency or at least semblance of self-control and impulse not to kill him around him.

Tony frowned as he sipped on his second double shot before making his decision and heaped several measured spoonfuls of ground beans into the coffee pot that was built into his espresso machine and flicked the switch. “Cap, I'll take over. Go get something to eat, breakfast, whatever. Run, do something, you need a break.”

“But-”

“Pick something up for me too, will ya? I want a breakfast sandwich with bacon, egg, and a hash brown in between. Make sure it's a plain bagel, I hate poppy or sesame – stuff in the teeth you know. I guess get Bruce one too, probably Hill too if she's coming up from her office any time soon.” He knew that the fridge stocked behind him was full of the ingredients, Steve making food constantly to feed his enhanced metabolism, but he also knew that Steve needed a break from all of this.

“Tony-”

“I want breakfast,” Tony smirked at the look Steve was giving him that he clearly knew what he was doing, “besides, I think I make a fair babysitter, right JARVIS?”

“Clearly,” he glared up at JARVIS' sarcasm and saw Steve smile tiredly before pushing himself up from the couch and sticking his drawing pad and box of special pencils – Tony never really understood what the difference was between 4H and 4B pencils – and giving the Soldier a indiscernible look before walking to the elevator to most likely either get his wallet and leave or to head straight downstairs.

“See you in a few  _ hours _ !” Tony called out, making sure to emphasize the last word as the elevator closed behind Steve. He glanced back to the Winter Soldier, he still did not feel comfortable calling him Barnes when he was still clearly a wound up human weapon, and saw that his eyes had tracked Steve's movement before fixing on him. The Soldier clearly understood that he was now his keeper and watcher, but Tony also saw the minute sense of relaxation after Steve had left.

That was very interesting.

The soft beep of the espresso machine alerting him that the pot of coffee was ready made him pull out a mug and pour a cup. He decided against putting any sugar or milk in it, settling for a pinch of salt in the cup instead. He vaguely remembered it was how his father liked it, citing something about “how the Navy boys liked it” during one of the many times he had apparently searched for Cap in the oceans during his childhood. It was one of the few things about his father that had stuck with him, distance and coldness aside, and he figured it was probably because most human beings he knew took their coffee black, sugar, or with milk and/or cream. He happened to drink it any way just as long as it had caffeine in it.

He took the piping hot mug and rounded the kitchenette-bar heading out to the balcony, gingerly stepping over the broken glass before cautiously approaching the Winter Soldier. “So,” he started, a tight smile drawn across his face, feeling a lot like how he had confronted Loki when he had been on a homicidal rage trying to destroy New York. He set the cup of coffee down by the Soldier's foot, taking a step back from the sharp look that he was getting from Bucky.

“It's not poisoned,” he saw him eye the cup before looking back at him those eyes narrowing fractionally, assessing him. He would have glibly offered a drink to the Soldier like he had with Loki, but the difference was that the Soldier had not tried to kill him – so far. If there was any chance of that or if it happened,  _ then _ he would probably offer that drink.

He must have passed as the Soldier finally moved, leaning forward to pick up the piping hot mug with his flesh-and-blood hand and took an experimental sip. He knew he could have easily asked JARVIS to make him a pot before he had even stepped out to the main living area of the penthouse, but Tony was not stupid. He still stood by his assessment that the Winter Soldier  _ knew _ what he had been doing when he finally made his appearance in the Tower. He was observant, constantly calculating things, and most definitely  _ not _ ignorant about how people behaved – except probably whenever Steve was near by, but Tony chalked it up to Red Room shenanigans.

If he had JARVIS make the coffee, then he suspected the Soldier would have ignored it. But since he had been observed to make the coffee personally, it must have proved something or changed the Winter Soldier's assessment of him. Tony was no stranger to assassination attempts since he had become Iron Man – most of them trying to shoot or blow him up – there were the rare ones that tried to slip a knife into him while he was out of the suit or try to on one memorable occasion, poison him. He had laughed, wondering what century it was until Thor said that it was very common in the Courts of Asgard.

That particular one had been stopped by Natasha, Barton, and Fury with both master assassins giving him lessons in identification of common poisons in the aftermath. He didn't really remember most of it, but what he got out of it was to watch someone carefully if they were preparing foodstuffs or any drinks. He figured if the master spies operated on that assumption, then so would someone like the Winter Soldier; especially after learning what Hill had told all of them last night.

“Navy style,” Tony said as he let his smile relax a fraction as the Soldier took another sip, clearly enjoying it even though his expression was still blank. “Dad used to drink it like that after the war while he was out looking for your long lost friend there.” He wondered how much of James Buchanan Barnes had resurfaced over the past year, if he remembered working with his father Howard during the war. Sometimes when his father mentioned Steve, there would be the occasional mention of his best friend Bucky, most about how the two were inseparable and constantly played pranks on the other Commandos and also sometimes on the upper echelons of the SSR. They had been harmless pranks according to his father, lightening moods whenever they got reports of a bad HYDRA attack or horrific loss of life in one of the theatres.

Tony did not really remember most of those stories, but he did remember sitting patiently as his father had told the stories, because it was the only time that he had ever seen his father with something other than a stern, cold expression. The fact that Steve had not really played a prank, or at least none that he knew about spoke a lot about his adjustment to 21 st century life and also his more serious mental state. Sure Steve laughed and joked on occasion the Avengers were together, but Tony could see that his friend was still adjusting, even now, three and half years after being defrosted.

“Maria Hill thinks you're a Red Room agent,” Tony started, finding it a little unnerving to be under such a steady gaze as he finished his second double shot and began to roll the tiny cup in his hands, “which I have no idea what the hell it means, but if she's mentioning Natasha Romanov in it as well as you, probably means all deadly-assassin-ninja thing.

“You know what, JARVIS, can you do a search parameter of anything and everything that is Red Room. Take the porn crap out because there's bound to be stuff like that floating around,” he said before giving the Soldier a quick grin, “JARVIS is the Tower's A.I., artificial intelligence, er, computer, uh...non-sentient being-”

“I know,” the Winter Soldier cut him off softly and Tony narrowed his gaze – was that a smirk playing around the corner of his lips?

“Huh,” he blinked a few times and laughed lightly before unceremoniously taking a seat on the ground. He suppressed a shudder at how  _ cold _ the concrete was, even as he could feel the beginnings of the summer humidity rising with the sun. “So you  _ can  _ talk.”

He only received a look that he brushed off with another chuckle, “So you know about JARVIS or about what an A.I. is?”

“There were already rumors about the Avengers Tower being guarded by a sophisticated computer program. After the alien invasion, it would have been prudent to upgrade those security measures with invisible defenses that disabled access entirely. Sight recognition would have been installed as well as countermeasures to deploy against known aggressors.

“Your association with SHIELD meant a database of enemies against the occupants of the Tower. The release of the files meant a new internal database was to be created against new enemies as well as old. However, your security could not compromise the publicity efforts of the Avengers themselves as a deterrent to your enemies as well as your own country,” the Winter Soldier said coolly, his voice scratchy as if he was not used to talking at length.

“Seems like you know everything,” Tony replied, staring at him, “got that from HYDRA?”

“Internet cafe down in Chinatown on Elizabeth Street,” the Soldier blinked once and Tony nodded.

“The things you can find researching the internet these days,” he muttered as he shook his head, “and here I thought you knew what you were doing. If you wanted in, all you had to do was just show yourself to security you know...not climb several stories in the vents.”

Tony only received another cool look from the Soldier before continuing, “See here's how I see it – you only show up now because you either remember something really jarring about Steve, or you need help and know about the Avengers. Maybe both, maybe one of those options. Or maybe even a third option to just kill all of us because your memory's so shot that you don't know who's the enemy and who are the good guys. I'm thinking probably not considering that I just fed you really good coffee and you haven't killed me yet with your Terminator arm.

“I'm also thinking that you heard everything last night, because if it was something Hill didn't want you hearing, there are plenty of other rooms in the Tower,” he rolled the empty espresso cup around his palms again, “so I'm going with the first two options.”

He saw the Soldier's eyes narrow a little, evaluating him again and met that gaze with one of his own, unafraid, unwilling to back down. He would be damned if something in the man formerly known as James Buchanan Barnes had cracked and all of this was an attempt to kill Steve on his watch. There was always the small possibility, but Tony refused to give up on it.

“You're like Howard,” the Soldier finally said and Tony blinked, surprised. That was  _ not _ the answer he was expecting and felt a flash of anger mixed with resentment bubbling in him. Ever since he had found out that his parents had been killed by HYDRA he had tried to push it out of his mind; tried not to think of the last years that he knew his father and how jaded he had sounded, how angry he was at times. “You break the rules.”

_ That _ got a laugh out of him, breaking the bubble of anger and resentment as he grinned, “Yeah, never liked the rule book.” He wanted to ask how much he remembered of his father, but decided against it – not for reasons regarding how much Barnes was remembering, but rather he did not want to hear anything about his father. Fury's revelations about his father helping found SHIELD and all sorts of other things back when he had just become Iron Man had ripped open a wound that had been festering and it was something Tony shied away from.

“So, which one is it? A memory of Steve that pretty much drew you here and exposed you or the fact that you need our help? And if you need our help, I'm also guessing that there are probably people out there looking for you. Smart of you to figure out what floor was RFID proofed so that no one could realize that you were there except for the internal security measures. Your clothes are worn, mostly what you see on homeless people, which means you are avoiding detection and I really hope you didn't kill some person for them, otherwise I'd say they're worn in for a while.

“I mean, it's not really a secret that Steve lives here, being Captain America and all, and the museum downstairs is a public tourist attraction, but don't you super assassins have some safe house or something you can go to if your cover is compromised?” he wondered out loud before the answer hit him a second later, “no, wait, don't answer that, I got it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Soldier, no, saw Barnes with a look that told him the clearly continue in the most sarcastic sense, “People  _ are _ looking for you, otherwise you'd probably be at the safe houses right? Yeah, probably one too many spy movies, spy novels, whatever, but it makes sense...”

He turned back to Barnes, “So, which option is it?”

“I need the name of a man whose face I see,” Barnes' voice was sounding a lot less like chairs dragged across floors and more human as he took another sip of his coffee, “I  _ remember  _ the targ-... _ him _ ...being able to draw.”

“And no other sketch artist in Times Square or whatever is able to do this,” Tony muttered shaking his head as he flipped the small porcelain cup from hand to hand, “yeah, I kind of get it, 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' deal. Smart of you to come to your enemy and pretend to be friends.”

This time there was a more visible reaction as Tony saw Barnes grip on the mug tighten, enough to send hairline cracks across it, but not enough to break it.  _ That _ was what he was looking for and smiled a little at the dark look the Soldier shot at him. “Hey pal, it's not like you were judging me earlier. Only fair that I feel you out.”

“We are not,” the Soldier's lips twisted on the word, “'friends.'”

“Then definitely a means to an end,” Tony knew he was treading a dangerous line here, judging by how cold those eyes had gone again, staring at him with a shuttered blankness, but the fact that the Winter Soldier had made no other move told him as much. But then again, he supposed that sitting this close to him, the Soldier could easily kill him without moving much. He gave him a quick smile, the ones reserved for politicians and government subpoenas, “I bet you didn't foresee this whole little issue when Steve showed up, about your programming or whatever's happening in your brain, kicking in right?”

The Soldier only stared at him, silent again.

“Or maybe you did, but decided the risk was worth the reward of going after whatever target is floating in your lost memories. Maybe you remember parts of your old life, especially enough to know that Steve is a really, like  _ really _ good artist. The money he can make off of his works can set him up with his own studio for three lifetimes. Maybe you knew about him and Bird Boy Wilson searching for you all this time and something finally clicked, I don't know. What I do know is that my friend is  _ hurting _ , even if he'll never, ever show it, and you're the cause.”

“Ah,” he held his hand up in a warning to silence the Soldier, “You're not the first half-baked psychotic we had to deal with, I've had the pleasure of dealing with Thor and his brother issues, but I'll be damned if you try to even hurt Steve again. You're a bully.”

The mug shattered and it was all Tony did to not flinch from it being thrown onto the ground in between them.

“I...was going...to ask him to stop...searching,” the cold, blank look was gone, replaced by something that he could not identify but sounded horribly broken underneath, “was going to identify the target and location.”

Tony swallowed, his mouth suddenly feeling dry, “He's not going to give up, you know.”

“I've seen that,” Barnes looked at him and in that instantly, Tony realized that the Winter Soldier had been watching them all along; watching Steve come in and out of the Tower for a very long time, maybe even the whole damn year since SHIELD was dissolved, watch him go out with fresh leads, return with empty hands; watch him go out and fight the battles with the Avengers and return to tirelessly continue his search for his long-lost best friend. All this time, he watched and did  _ nothing _ , until now.

He thought back to what Barnes had said, about remembering Steve's ability to draw and a face in his memories that he could not identify. “You are trying to remember,” he breathed out quietly, the pieces fitting together in his mind, “something about...what, location? Who you are? What?”

“How and why they made me,” Barnes interrupted quietly, lifting his silvery prosthetic arm and Tony winced at the faint mechanical whine that sounded like machinery in agony to his ears. “That much I can figure out...”

“And use Stark Industries' resources to figure out the target Steve's going to sketch,” he added and saw Barnes tilt his head fractionally, “certainly the right place...” He stopped tossing the cup from hand to hand, “You know Steve's going to follow you after you get your information right?”

Barnes nodded stiffly as if unused to doing such a casual thing, “I know. He never did learn how to back down from a fight he couldn't win.” A curious look flitted briefly across his face before it was shuttered and Tony wondered if Barnes had remembered something. The mind was a curious thing and Bruce was still trying to figure out what had been done to Barnes' brain.

“Whoever this target is, sitting in your head, must be someone pretty important or HYDRA related,” Tony briefly stretched his arms, “I'm guessing you don't mind us being the cavalry on this hunt of yours?”

The soft snort confirmed his thoughts – Barnes remembered something, but also was realizing that he needed help in whatever one-man crusade he was hoping to jump start. By this time, Tony had a pretty good idea that Barnes had the intention of asking for Steve's help in a sketch or whatever, using S.I.'s resources, and letting the Avengers be the spear for him while he started his own hunt. The only snag in this plan was more than likely his Red Room based programming kicking in, crippling him in severe pain whenever Steve was in the vicinity.

They sat in silence for a few minutes before Tony gestured to his metal arm, “You should get that looked at.”

Barnes only stared at him before haltingly opening his mouth, “It...did not end well the last time someone looked at it.”

Tony gave him a tight smile as he stood up, feeling a few bones pop on his lower spine as he stretched, “I'd like to think I'm better than most people.” He liked a challenge and hoped that the Winter Soldier would be agreeable.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Two fics of trying to stop Tony Stark from taking over with his POV and I've failed on the third fic. (sigh) Upside, at least Bucky is...talking ish. Mostly just quiet and stuff, but still... I also forgot to mention what else I'm cribbing from to 'program' Bucky. Star Wars'  _ Heir to the Empire _ (Mara Jade and the Emperor's last command to her) and  _ X-Wing _ book series (Lusankya facility) are definitely inspirations as is  _ Bourne's _ Project Treadstone and Blackbriar as well as  _ Firefly's _ River Tam.

**Also, as of note, Red Room/Project Black Widow –** _ **The Trickster Universe** _ **and fics associated with this series are movie-verse only (and like the movies, will not mention mutants, X-Men, or anything that is not Marvel Cinematic Universe-rights owned). Anything related to the Red Room is an adaptation of the comics-verse to how I could theoretically see it in the movies.**

Secondary note: It's been a while since I've read any of the comic storylines, so I'm working with a faulty memory regarding the Red Room. I'll do my due diligence and research, but like I said, it's an adaptation so certain elements will make it in, other elements discarded.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 6_

 

It was quiet as the elevators opened and Steve stepped out, having finished his morning run around Manhattan Island, across the Brooklyn Bridge and back, before finally picking up breakfast at the nearby bagel shop he knew Tony occasionally frequented. Tony had been right, he needed a run to clear his head and wake himself up after all that had happened the previous day and night. There had been something soothing about not really thinking except the rhythmic pounding of pavement and occasional joggers that waved to him on his run.

He had already showered and changed into fresher clothes before descending to the quiet penthouse floor with his bag of breakfast sandwiches, picking two extra ones for Bucky in case his friend was hungry. He did not know if he would eat it, but hoped that it would be taken as a measure of kindness.

Even though he had mostly emptied his mind about all that had happened during his run, he had kept the thought that Bucky had sought him out in his mind. One of the first things that Sam had said to him when they began the search a year ago was that his friend would be different and Steve had readily agreed. He knew that they had all gone through war and hell and that things were different, but he had also told Sam that even if Bucky was not the same Bucky he remembered, he at least had to try – to help him regain a semblance of himself instead of the shell he was.

He was not naïve enough to think that Bucky would be the best friend he had grown up with and fought the war with, the war and everything that was after it left their scars. But he was willing to help Bucky cope and be there for him. That was all that mattered.

“Tony?” he called out as he walked into the main living area and froze. The sun was already up now, the humidity and heat wafting in from the broken windows, warring with the central air conditioning of the area. But the place where Bucky had been sitting was empty. “JARVIS?!”

“Sir and Sergeant Barnes are in Sir's workshop,” JARVIS replied and Steve blinked, surprised before concern washed over him.

“Is, uh-”

“Sergeant Barnes is apparently allowing Sir to work on his arm,” for an artificial intelligence, Steve thought he heard a bit of a miffed wonderment in his mechanized British-accented voice. The fact that JARVIS was as surprised as he spoke volumes as to two things: one – mainly Bucky's mental state when he  _ was not _ around, two – Bucky's mental state when he  _ was _ around. Steve did not know how to quell the sudden disquiet that filled him at that revelation and tightened his grip a little on the paper bag he was carrying full of foodstuffs.

“Captain-”

“Steve, JARVIS,” he said absently, still processing the revelation, as he reminded the A.I. to call him by his first name several times since he had moved into the Tower.

“Captain,” the artificial intelligence insisted, apparently still ignoring his request, “Dr. Banner requests your presence in his lab.”

“The one Bucky was in?” he headed back to the elevator.

“No sir, his other lab,” JARVIS replied as Steve nodded and pressed the button to take him to the floor that also housed Bruce's suite of rooms. He had only been down in Bruce's lab twice since moving in, finding it full of liquids, papers, books, anything and everything that made it look like one giant science experiment akin to Tony's metal and electronics-filled workshop and just as messy. He had no doubts that Bruce was constantly working on more research about the super soldier serum and how to turn himself back to normal, but on more than one occasion, there were other projects he was working on.

“Thanks JARVIS,” he said and arrived on the designated floor a few seconds later. Stepping out, he headed down the hall to see that Hill and Bruce were in Bruce's lab, both with their backs turned to him staring at what looked like a project monitor of sorts.

Knocking politely on the glass, he saw them look up and opened the door into the lab. “I brought food?”

Both their faces broke out into smiles before Maria walked over and took the bag from him, opening it up and digging around before handing over to Bruce a breakfast sandwich with his name on it and taking one with hers on it.

“Thanks, I ate a breakfast bar earlier, but this is definitely needed,” Hill put the bag on top of some empty petri dishes, “the others are for Stark and Sergeant Barnes?”

“Yeah, though I guess maybe I shouldn't go in there,” Steve gestured with his chin towards whatever monitor they had been hovering over and Hill shrugged in between bites of her sandwich before gesturing with a free hand for him to look at what they were looking at.

“JARVIS alerted me as soon as Tony and Barnes went into his workshop,” Bruce shrugged, “I let Hill know and she said we should set up a real-time brain scan overlay to see what kinds of reactions happen with his neuron-circuitry. I wanted to let you know, but you kind of left your cellphone in your room after you changed.”

“Yeah, I didn't realize I dropped it on my way out,” Steve replied a little sheepishly, having forgotten that his cellphone was not with him during his morning run after he was halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge. He normally carried his cellphone with him, but always left it on vibrate, still not quite understanding why people were so attached to their electronic devices in this day and age. Perhaps it was a bit old-fashioned of his mindset, but he rather liked the 'peace' of not being constantly glued to an electronic device and just listen to the natural sound from the city, pedestrians, and everything in between during his morning runs.

“No worries,” Bruce shrugged, having tucked away his sandwich rather quickly and was now absently brushing crumbs from the corners of his lips.

“This does unfortunately confirm the theory that Sergeant Barnes has a somewhat less hostile reaction without your presence,” Hill gestured to the screen, which showed Bucky not sitting in chair and being prodded by Stark as Steve had expected, but rather was standing staring at a holographic model that had been made of his metallic arm.

“Somewhat less?”

“He didn't exactly like sitting down to be scanned by Tony's tech initially. Luckily before anything happened, Tony apparently got it and had him stand up, walk around, even examine Dummy, You, and Butterfingers,” Bruce brought up a smaller screen that showed exactly what he was saying.

“Tony doesn't like anyone touching his robots,” Steve said, surprised. He had heard from Pepper one day that in the aftermath of the Malibu home destroyed, the first thing Tony had done after having the shrapnel removed from his chest, was to go and dig up his three robotic arms before spending a whole week holed up in his workshop working on them. There had also been the unspoken rule whenever entering Tony's workshop was that you did not go and touch the robotic arms unless they approached you first – or in Steve's case for some odd reason, tended to crowd around him like overactive puppies of a sort.

“Yeah,” Bruce's voice had an odd soft quality to it and Steve knew it would have been similar to his own had he said the same thing. Tony Stark may have been the most obnoxious, loud, annoying, bull-headed, self-serving man anyone had known, but there was a very good heart somewhere in there. A heart that understood on a level that should not even exist because of the pain and tragedy of his own life, but nonetheless always strove to ensure mistakes were rectified and lives saved.

There were very few things that drove Tony into doing something like this and Steve thought back to what Stark had said the day before, “He must have figured out something in Bucky's arm was StarkTech.”

“Really?” both Bruce and Maria looked surprised and Steve shook his head.

“Tony only told me in so many words that Bucky's arm might be part vibranium,” he explained, “and that something in the shipments were traced back to the old SSR bunker Coulson's using right now as a base of operations in London.”

“I thought your shield was the only vibranium in existence,” Bruce said and Steve nodded.

“That's what I thought, but if the shipments were traced back to the old bunker, it could mean-”

“That HYDRA had infiltrated the SSR or even Stark Industries from the beginning and was planning all of this,” Hill finished for him, her lips pinched as she crumpled up her sandwich's wrapper and tossed it into a nearby slightly-overflowing garbage can, “Phil hasn't gotten back to me yet about the other leads I put out for him regarding HYDRA installations, but I'll ask about this one. How come Stark didn't tell me-”

“You should know by now that Tony forgets, deliberately or not,” Bruce shook his head and Hill rolled her eyes.

“The things I do as New York's head of security for S.I.,” she muttered.

They all watched for a few minutes in silence at Tony who was gesticulating with some animation towards the projection of Bucky's arm to Bucky himself. From the various angles on the security cameras it looked like Bucky was actually paying attention to what Stark was saying. Steve never really learned to read lips, but he did learn to read a lot of body language, especially when he was still skinny and needed a clue as to how the bullies reacted to him. Then again, usually it was obvious considering he mouthed off to them. Reading women's body language was a lot harder for him, probably impossible since he did not realize how forward some of them were back in the SSR headquarters, and especially how Peggy had reacted that one time.

Soldiers, he supposed, were much easier to read, and he had spent nearly his whole life taking cues from Bucky's silent non-verbal body language to either back him up in a fight or to prepare to run like hell after Bucky threw the first punch before joining him in flight. Right now, he could see that Bucky was rather attentively listening to what Stark was saying, and it tugged a bit of a guilty hurt within him. The fact that Tony was making far more progress in actually  _ reaching _ Bucky than he had without having parts of the Tower destroyed, made him grimace inwardly.

“I don't know if it's a good idea for Tony to actually fix his arm,” Hill murmured after a few minutes, “military hardware-wise, I wouldn't do it. Too much of an advantage to a still-unknown quantity.”

In that instance, all of the guilt and hurt that had been building in him at seeing Tony talking with Bucky dissipated as he realized what Maria was saying. He looked at Bucky again and realized he had been seeing his friend with a soldier's perspective, reading him like he would read a soldier on the battlefield, watching their movements, patrols, the way they reacted to orders given, etc. And he also belatedly realized that while Tony was trying to do what he could the only way he knew how, he could only really relate to the perceived mistakes he had made by talking hardware, 'fixing' the mechanical aspect. Tony was definitely not a people person for the more human side – unless Pepper was involved.

He let the corner of his lips quirk up in a small humorless smile at Hill's implied statement – that while Tony seemed to be reaching Bucky, it was more likely to be his presence that would reach the  _ human _ part of his best friend.

“Tony wants to look at that arm no matter what,” Bruce sounded resigned as he nodded his agreement with what Hill said, “but I can definitely tell you the live scans are showing a minute difference than what I showed you yesterday Steve.”

“Hmm?” he looked up from the security feed to a window that Bruce flicked over with a hand and expanded to show the affected areas of Bucky's brain.

“It's hardly noticeable unless you know what you're looking for,” Bruce pointed out the dark spot that Steve remembered staring at yesterday, “here and here. The faint discoloration is gone, though still not quite there. It's definitely still dark, but it's also changed a bit. I kind of want to get more blood work from him to see if there's any alterations in the chemistry and make up, Maria, do you know if the Red Room programming or whatever had any alterations in blood work?”

“That I don't know,” Hill answered beside him as Steve crinkled his brow, staring at the spots that Bruce was pointing out. He remembered what the spots looked like yesterday, the serum gifting him with an uncanny memory, but he honestly could not tell the difference- Ah...maybe that was it... He pointed to a spot, “I think that used to be a shade darker?”

“Yeah!” Bruce nodded eagerly, “that's a new one-”

“Looked like the pressure of how I sometimes use charcoal for shadowing,” he admitted sheepishly.

“I'll add that to my search list and also email a few contacts about it,” Hill continued as if they had not interrupted and Steve shot a quick look at her to see her nod once. She was going to reach out to Fury through whatever methods she had to contact him. It was a very rare thing to do, the former Director of SHIELD having been true to his word and had gone completely underground and incommunicado. Steve knew that Hill had the means to contact Fury, being his second-in-command and all, but it was also a privileged she never confirmed nor denied to anyone in the circle that knew he had survived. They needed more information about the Red Room programming and the best way was to contact a survivor of such programming.

“Thanks,” Bruce replied as he pinched his fingers, expanding and collapsing the new area that Steve had pointed out before pulling a stylus out and seemingly wrote on air, until the faint outline of a holographic notepad visualized next to the brain scan.

As they left Bruce to his note taking, Steve brought the security feed back to the forefront, studying it as well as watching Bucky's interaction, or lack-thereof, with Stark. It looked like Tony was showing some kind of diagramming within Bucky's arm, judging by the images of internal circuitry and wiring that made no sense to him and looked a little too eerily like veins, muscles, and skeletal structure in a natural arm.

“JARVIS finished hacking into Pierce's files,” Hill started conversationally as she crossed her arms and stared at the same feed with him. “There are references to D.C. which support Bruce's theory that Sergeant Barnes has had some maintenance work done before put into cryostasis. We didn't expect any overt mention of the location or facility, but there are references and numbers that I've sent down to our agent in the CIA so she can get some numbers crunched.”

“CIA?” Steve was not aware that anyone else was involved outside of Tony, Maria, Sam, and JARVIS.

“Agent 13 has always been the most discreet of all our agents, even more so than Romanov or Barton,” the corner of Maria's lips quirked up in a tiny smile and Steve chuckled lightly.

“Sharon, right?” he saw an eyebrow raise up at his inquiry and shrugged, “Natasha told me her name before disappearing off the grid.”

“Those of us who were hand-picked by Fury had coordinates on our badges for full evac protocol if someone really took out SHIELD. Just didn't realize HYDRA would be the one to do that along with the information purge, but you never know,” she did not look troubled by it and Steve was not going to apologize for telling Fury that SHIELD had to go if HYDRA went, but he did suppress the urge to apologize.

“Yours led to Stark Industries?”

“Well, it led to the Avengers Tower, but before, it led to Tony's Malibu house,” Hill shrugged, “Agent 13's was to the CIA where she began to feed me information and I passed it Coulson after he got set up in London a few months back.”

“I've asked Sharon to hook up with Sam when she finishes crunching the numbers , though I didn't tell her who or what it's for. I'm also trusting Wilson to be discreet about this-”

“He will be,” Steve supplied and Maria nodded her head.

“I figured as much,” she waved off his interruption, “but Agent 13 will need to keep her cover intact in the CIA. They already know she was a former SHIELD agent so she is under surveillance, but the CIA also knows a good asset when they see one. The reason why Fury assigned her to the CIA as her escape option was because in her files, she's only been with SHIELD for about a year before everything went down, not high enough in the Levels to know any real information.”

“There's a 'but' in there...” Steve remembered Sharon, or when she was posing as Kate, the nurse who worked in the local hospital. She was young, and he would have pegged her as about a little younger than him, probably just recently graduated from medical school.

“She's been training her whole life-” Steve grimaced and Maria shook her head, “-not like Romanov. I mean, she grew up literally in the halls of SHIELD. Her parents were agents, her grand-aunt was an agent, her cousins were agents in different agencies, one's even a double-o in MI6, so she's kind of been in the spy business her whole life.”

“Did she get to choose?” Steve asked before shaking his head at how callous his question was, “no, don't answer. That was wrong of me. I just...this whole spy thing-”

“I know,” Hill shrugged again, showing that she understood where he was coming from, “but think of it like military brats growing up on military bases. Some choose to follow in their parents footsteps, some don't...”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her tighten her arms across her biceps as she stared at the footage and realized that Hill was talking from personal experience. “I'm sorry...”

Maria smiled bitterly, “Don't be. You don't have to deal with your still active-mother and father denouncing you for joining a terrorist group that's been killing quote, 'good American boys and girls'.”

“...Sorry,” he finished lamely and she uncrossed her arms before patting him affectionately on the arm.

“I said don't be,” she reassured him before laughing softly, “Romanov was right, you're pretty horrible at talking to women.”

That broke the tension and Steve shook his head, “Not you too.” He took the levity for what it was before sobering a little, “Do you think it will help him?” He nodded towards Bucky who was sitting as still as he had last night, but there was still an intensity to his gaze that showed he was paying attention to Stark's explanations, or even ramblings by this point.

“For your sake, I hope so,” Maria caught his eye and stared straight at him, her gaze never wavering, “if it was my call, I would have put the bullet in between his eyes and be done with it. I would have done the same with Romanov, but she eventually proved me wrong.”

Steve blinked once, “Why?”

“Because he's dangerous, a liability, and with one more weapon that we can neutralize, that's one less weapon HYDRA has against us. With the Fridge raided and most of the 0-8-4s or stuff supposedly sent into Slingshot in their hands, the less weapons they have, the better.”

“But if you have the chance to turn the weapon against them, why not take it,” Bruce joined them as he closed several open projected windows with a wave of his hand, “but that's not the point, is it Agent Hill? Turn a former weapon into an allied weapon?”

“It's a very naïve thought to think that Sergeant Barnes will be the same after everything,” Hill pointed out with a serious look. “He's a weapon that can be used against-

“-yeah, against the enemies of what's left of SHIELD, but are you going to do that to him?”

“No,” Hill shook her head, “he has to make the choice, like Romanov did. She chose to fight and prove herself that she was her own person and in doing so, proved me wrong.”

“You know I know what you're trying to do, Maria, Bruce,” Steve glanced between the two of them, “I'm not that stupid-”

“Never said you were, Rogers,” the corner of Hill's lips quirked up in a crooked smile, “but I wanted to be sure. Because you can't falter once you've started on this path. One misstep, one moment of weakness and you'll lose your best friend forever – you'll lose your life too, even if you may not care for it because its your best friend trying to kill you. Because just remember, there are others who are willing to stand by you, but won't stand to see you recklessly throw away your life because you want your best friend back. You start walking down this path and we'll follow, but you need to keep your guard up.”

The unspoken warning to  _ not _ do what Fury had done to test Romanov hung in the air. Steve immediately understood that whatever Maria had witnessed, had prevented with her STRIKE Team Alpha, it had shaken her confidence. She had obviously regained it since then, but she also did not want a repeat of what happened. But the way she spoke, to Steve it sounded like there was more to just Fury's test of Romanov, more to everything, but at the same time he could sense that it was highly personal and most certainly none of his business.

“For a moment, I thought it was Fury talking to me,” Steve smiled at Maria who barked out a quiet laugh.

“I'll take that as a very high compliment,” she replied, smiling easily back at him, “and you're welcome.”

“Thanks,” he said turning back to the monitor and continued to watch Bucky and Tony. He needed that, a reassurance from his friends that he was not the only one floundering here, unsure, no heading, nowhere to turn, no one to turn to. He knew that they were helping him, but to hear it was another thing and it made him glad.

* * *

It was three days later that a semblance of routine had begun to emerge. Tony's efforts on patiently explaining to Bucky about his metal arm for a day and half, to the point where Bucky had actually allowed him to tentatively work on it – Steve and the others had froze whenever Bucky's metallic fingers twitched as if they were going to suddenly choke Stark or throw him into the wall – for the next day and half, had proved fruitful. Bruce had noted that Bucky's mental state had calmed down somewhat, using the first night as a baseline. The first thing done was to send Steve off to sleep, having stayed awake for the past ninety-six hours, keeping his word to Hill to be on his guard.

Steve had stayed up past the ninety-sixth hour before, during the war when they had been stuck in their foxholes in a near-constant shelling of their area by German forces instead of HYDRA. They had been trying to get to a HYDRA facility deep behind enemy lines, but could not move due to the area being a contested zone between the Axis and Allied forces. But the random shelling had kept the Howling Commandos on edge, kept the adrenaline flowing even though that much stress was never good for a body, even one enhanced with super soldier serum.

During the shellings, he had tried to give his men a chance to sleep by offering his shield as cover, to block out some of the noise as well as random debris falling on them. All of them had balked at it, waving his concern off with remarks about how they could stay up, but he had insisted and all but shoved the shield first on Bucky since he was their sniper and thus needed to keep his eyes fresh and alert. After Bucky was Gabe then the rest of the Commandos before he took the last shift himself – which never happened. Bucky had spotted a momentary break and they had all surged forward towards their goal.

The HYDRA base had been taken down in short order and they had driven from it, but Steve remembered he was only vaguely aware of it, having apparently passed out as soon as he felt the danger pass. It was unbecoming of an officer, and he had immediately woken up, but his men had all said that there was no danger and ignored his protests and apologies for falling asleep in the back of the truck.

When the semblance of a routine had been established, Bruce had unceremoniously shoved him out of his lab and ordered JARVIS to take him up to his floor with no detours or excuses. Steve had been grateful for the chance to finally sleep and had promptly passed out for six hours before waking up, a little disoriented and confused. He had been told by JARVIS that Tony and Bucky had finished in the lab for the day with Tony's social and not-so-social appointments back on his schedule to reassure New York City itself that things were fine.

Steve had taken over watch for Tony then, starting his sketch for Bucky after receiving the request from Tony. Bucky had stared at him the whole time, having been left in the main living area of the penthouse by Tony – even though he had his own suite of rooms that he never went to – while Steve sketched variations of the description JARVIS had relayed to him as well as Tony's own input.

The sketches took a while, but each time he was finished, he showed Bucky who never moved from where he was. He had not even moved an inch whenever Steve had entered the room and even if he went to the kitchenette-bar to cook food. When he showed the sketches, he had seen his best friend's face become a little more animated, furrowed, or puzzled, the only sign that Bucky was actually paying attention. But it was enough for him to know that he had not drawn the face that Bucky kept seeing in his memories or dreams.

Steve did not know if Bucky slept, but he had dared not lower his guard again and it was proof of both Bruce's hypothesis and Hill's own observations that Bucky had not reacted so badly since that first night. Occasionally, Steve had heard the whine of his mechanical arm, flexing of fingers and even sometimes things shattering, but those were things like a crater in the granite flooring or a hapless vase that was nearby. But there was no frenetic destruction, though Steve caught Bucky's face scrunched up in pain, as if forcibly warding off the pain from his programming. Those were usually followed by something breaking and while Steve managed to not flinch each time it happened, and to keep his hands steady while drawing, it still hurt.

His friend was fighting and Steve knew he had to fight too. He hoped that Sam and Sharon had information soon. It would be five days since Bucky had arrived at the Avengers Tower that the first breakthrough appeared.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

I have to thank my beta reader, Legume Shadow, for introducing me to “Band of Brothers.” In particular, the first episode I saw was Episode 6, “Bastogne” and Episode 7 “The Breaking Point” where everyone's in foxholes – (Legume Shadow liked the medic, Roe, apparently) and showed me that episode before we watched everything after that (Speirs is my favorite). That's where I got the inspiration for a brief memory moment for Steve, the foxholes, and using his shield to at least give his men a semblance of peace and sleep as they're getting shelled.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 7_

 

The pain had not ebbed, but it had not grown either and he took the small measure of comfort that had been provided. He knew it was a rare thing to have, and cherished it like the quiet moments in between the end of his orders and his return to his handlers. They had been like brief headlights across his vision in the past five days, a new symptom he had not experienced since he had traveled to New York City. He knew that the target, that Rogers was the cause and while he knew he should have been frightened, what terrified him even more was that he  _ wanted _ those flashes – wanted that quiet, the nothingness that was unlike the  _ nothingness _ of rote and orders.

But as he grasped at the slippery nothingness, the cocooning of pain, he also saw the phantom images of cruel calculating eyes, buzzing whines that heralded pain not in his head and pain in his head. He had remembered that when Stark had started to finally work on his arm. It had been an effort on his part not to lash out, not to give into the sudden flash of cruel faces in surgical masks hovering over him, touching him, making him go to sleep, making him feel the pain-

He had to remind himself that Stark had given him a measure of mercy – he knew that word and its denotations, but only briefly remembered it in context, stopping himself from shooting through a little girl who had wandered from her parents into his target's line of sight. Stark had been fearless when he should have been fearful; had explained down the last detail about the construction of his arm, but not of the why and the material used.

He knew the targ-, he knew Rogers was nearby, the pain that constantly stabbed between his eyes still there, a phantom pressure that made him want to dig out his own face, but had managed to keep steady, to focus on his blue eyes. The blue eyes that were now watching him carefully, guard constantly up and he was glad. Rogers should have never have let his guard down – it had clawed at something within him, something base, primal, that he could not identify until just a day ago when Stark was rambling about how scared and terrified he was in Afghanistan. Terror...that was what it was, the primal instinct that had made him scramble, made him run away, to not give in, to not face it, because it  _ terrified _ him. It was not like a voice whispering insistent demands to kill his target, but it was not a stretch for him to imagine it amongst the jarring flashes of faces, voices, and names he should have known. It was, still is, a need for him to eliminate his target, to eliminate Rogers, akin to the simple flexing of fingers, a muscle memory.

He had recognized it as much, an odd clarity settling over him for the past five days since he had entered the Avengers Tower. Perhaps it was an innate instinct, or perhaps something else, but he had not had such  _ clarity _ for a very long time. But he also knew that it was a razor's edge, so close to the targ-, so close to Rogers. Tony Stark had mentioned the Red Room, echoing the former SHIELD Agent Maria Hill's words days ago. Stark had also been right, SHIELD Agent Hill could have discussed the Red Room, her speculations about his mindset, about anything and everything in a different room at the Tower, but she had specifically chosen that area.

She had never been a target, he knew that, but he had also studied her brief profile while Director Colonel Nicholas J. Fury had been his target. She was a known, very loyal, associate and knew that he always needed contingency plans. He was not surprised to hear that another agent, the name Natasha Romanov oddly familiar, had been sent to kill Fury and was supposedly 'programmed' like he had by the Red Room. The name had no connotations except for a smattering of words in Russian he could not identify as whether it was part of hearing the Russian last name Romanov, or because of memories.

He supposed it was perhaps both, but did not dwell on it – most likely because Fury was dead and there was nothing associated with that name except for profiles and past contingency plans. It did not elicit the same pain or memory flashes of the face in his mind that he knew was associated with why, who, and how he was James Buchanan Barnes, or Bucky as Rogers called him. He knew enough that there was some truth in Rogers' voice, even if whitewashed profile of him in the Air and Space Museum had half-lies and half-truths. He had no name except what his handlers had called him, Winter Soldier.

Perhaps there was a significance in such a name when he had sat down in the many cheap internet cafes, mostly around Little Italy, Chinatown, and Flushing, Queens when he wanted a change from Manhattan Island. The search revealed no such name except for words written by Thomas Paine, about a “summer soldier,” along side compiled articles about suspected rumors through seventy years of intelligence gathered about the Winter Soldier. There were no pictures, no descriptive except for the mention of a metal arm and unmarked Soviet-style bullets – he ignored those after the first day of searches unlocked the first of many lucid dreams, one in a room bathed in blood and strewn bodies.

His search of Paine revealed nothing of relevance and so disregarded that thread except to connect it to someone in HYDRA who had childish whims long ago. The codename given to him did nothing but elicit anger in him, especially since the memories started to bleed into him since he had informally met Rogers on the rooftop of DuPont Circle. Former Agent Maria Hill had insisted on calling him Sergeant Barnes. The target Rogers called him Bucky or James Buchanan Barnes. Rule-breaking Tony Stark called him Barnes and alternatively Winter Soldier along with some other names related to winter and cold. He supposed if these people he had come for help and for information wanted to call him whatever they wanted, he would respond in kind.

A part of him wanted a name, wanted to be known as something else other than what HYDRA had called him, but at the same time he could feel the deep fear, the same terror that plagued him whenever he was within Rogers' presence. It clawed and tore at him, a never-ending pain that he thought he would fall into the abyss of nothingness if he dared step off the edge and embrace it. He could not lose himself again, that much he knew. If he stepped off into the abyss, would he end up with no memories? Would he not remember  _ anything _ ?

He was not so far gone as to not know that his codename had elicited fear, action, and the presence of weaponry. That much he had gathered in the brief flashes of memories and lucid dreams. It was always uneasiness, dread, panic, he had seen that on the Insight Helicarrier – remembered dreams shattered, the brief light of hope only extinguished by a swift execution at his hands or at the barrel end of rifle he had been carrying. And he had felt  _ nothing _ , up until the target had pleaded with him to not do this, to not fight him. The unexpected rage, fury, anger, despair – emotions he did not know where it came from except for perhaps a brief moment of free-falling through a cold arctic Alpine wind – as he attacked...

That had piqued a puzzlement within him, as to why this man dressed in a ridiculous spangled outfit would let himself be killed. Would be willing to be there, “'till the end of the line'” for him. He had saw a brief flash of hands, shaking in friendship, warmth, a willingness to die for each other because they had each others' backs; that was what brothers did – even though he was distinctly sure they were not blood related.

He had dove into the Potomac, after the despairing scream of denial had lashed through his head, stabbing a deep knife into his mind. It dug at him, shredded deep within, before he knew he had to save the target, save Rogers. And then he had left him there, because there was nothing else to do and he did not know why – still did not know why – but he could not face Rogers, could not kill him.

Even though every fiber of his being screamed and tried to force him to.

“Puppet,” he murmured quietly, bringing himself out of his reverie as he realized he had been absently scratching one of the robotic arms on a joint. The arm, however sentient like the artificial intelligence that guarded the Tower, seemed to enjoy it, judging by the almost-mechanical whir it exuded. The other two robotic arms were crowded around, almost like docile puppies. He had noticed that whenever he was in the workshop, the arms had all but ignored Tony Stark in favor of him, waiting like well-behaved pets, until Stark threatened to toss them into a scrap heap.

“Puppet?” said man echoed distractedly from where he worked across the room on the holographic interfacing of his arm.

“Strings cut,” he stopped scratching and lifted his metallic arm away, staring at it as he ran his flesh-and-blood hand over the smooth surface. He could feel the vague sensation of his fingers running over his metal ones, almost like an afterthought, but still registering in his mind. The tactile feel of his metal arm was not as great as his real one, but he knew enough that the simulated pain, touch, and feel on his metal arm was easily translated to the receptors in his mind and nervous system. Stark had explained something along the lines of neuro-interfacing and from what he gathered, it was rather advance technology judging by how far prosthetics had come from when man first lost a functional limb.

He knew as much that there was wiring in the metal arm to turn off the receptors, but also remembered that sometimes there was an intense pain from it. Like washed out static, he recalled words to reset the 'software' within the arm to temporarily fix it was to crank it in a circle; similar to stretching out pelvic and shoulder muscles, loosening the joint while resetting it back to where it was supposed to function. He vaguely remembered grabbing a neck, eyes bulging before tossing the disgusting face away. That had been preceded by jolts of agony that he did not want.

“Yeah, puppet, I get it, but, puppet?” Stark looked beyond the interfacing at him and he shrugged, ignoring the sharp shooting pain that traveled from his shoulder to his nerves. He had walked away from the remnants of the Helicarrier and Potomac with his shoulder dislocated and had popped it back in, instinct taking over to roll the joint back into its socket. But it was not a perfect fix and it ached. He knew it compromised his ability to defend himself and to take down the targ- he did not want to take down Rogers – but it was but naught a trivial matter to him.

“Dummy, stop hogging Terminator over there and help me here. I need you to hold it steady.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the robotic arm chirp, its clamps opening and closing in an approximation of chirping, before it trundled away from him and towards where Stark had been working for the past four days. It was a micro-chip of sorts and the man had claimed it would prevent any electronic device from shorting out the neuro-interfacing. When Stark had first scanned his arm and its structure, he had made noises that sounded like a keening wail about how his arm was half-fried by what looked like an EMP that someone had jury-rigged to function before breaking down again.

He had offered no recourse or explanation, but knew it was more than likely caused by the coin-like disc the Black Widow had used to momentarily incapacitate him. She had never been a priority target, rather part of the collateral damage he had been willing to inflict to get to his target, to get to Rogers. He vaguely remembered the same faces poking, prodding, the sensation of sharp pain, swimming in a haze of memories that had been clawing at him in the aftermath, but it slipped through his fingers like water on metal.

“You know, I'm kind of glad you're trusting me with this, I mean with assassination and all of that crap under your belt, you actually trust me not to install a bomb into your arm,” Stark suddenly spoke up again, his words muffled by the clenching of teeth as he stared from the projection to what he was working on and back.

He only stared at the other man as he absently tapped one of the other robotic arms who had taken the first's place on the joint. The arm bobbed up and down with his motion, seemingly content with letting him do whatever he wanted.

“Just kidding,” the smile Stark threw at him did not reach his eyes before shaking his head, “no seriously, I mean, I'm glad we found the kill-switch, even though it's like half destroyed from a year without repairs or you wasting your arm on the Helicarrier – but it's definitely not waterlogged, so at least your arm is waterproof. But seriously, you letting me do this...well...I mean there's a chance you'll probably choke the life out of me when I try to install this, but hey, I didn't realize you would let it get this far.”

He tilted his head a little, wondering what Stark was getting at with his current rambling. He thought he saw the ghostly images of people in lab coats, sharp pain, and grabbing pliant flesh to crush in his hands. “They...did what they wanted...” he supposed there was supposed to be some emotion behind them – something deep within told him he should be furious – but he did not really know how to translate it as he stared at the gleaming metal.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Stark pause, put his tools down and stare at him, his face expressionless and flat, his eyes betraying nothing. After what seemed like a long moment the other man picked his tools up again and went back to work.

“Do you want this?” Stark asked after minutes of silence and he looked over to see that there was tension in his posture as he hunched over his workstation. There was something dangerous in the tension, but he innately knew it was not directed at him, but at what he was working on. Still, he could feel himself responding to that tension, his senses sorting out the various patterns and ways to escape-

“Sir, might I advise that you relax a little. Sergeant Barnes' is responding in a fight or flight scenario,” the artificial intelligence's voice piping from overhead seemingly startled Stark and he noted the immediate relaxing of his shoulders as he sat up and looked at him, assessing him before giving him another smile that did not reach his eyes.

“Sorry,” Stark threw out the apology, waving at him with a tool in his hand, “answer me honestly Barnes, do, you, want this?” He pointed to the micro-chip he was working on.

He did not understand the question asked. Why would Stark ask if he wanted it if there were already plans in place for it? It was a good preventative measure to heighten the security of his arm and would prevent neuro-shock in the long run. Stark had allowed him to witness each step of the process to seemingly convince him that it was not an explosive device or another kill-switch that HYDRA had installed into his arm.

“I'm asking because you need a say in this,” Stark stared hard at him, “I usually just make things and give them to people, but they usually want it. You, you need a say in what's going into you. You can't just let someone mess with you and come out like sunshine and rainbows.”

Stark always had unusual words that he did not quite understand, but at the same time understood it on some level. He could hear the urgency, the importance in what Stark was asking and shrugged. What he wanted was irrelevant and the concept of  _ wanting  _ something, especially since all he recalled was just painful prodding and sensations pushed away at the want. He supposed he  _ wanted _ them to stop it, had lashed out in a haze to stop the pain, had found himself in more pain and remembered screaming because he had failed-

_ “Your actions have shaped a century and I need you to do it again _ ,”  _ the voice was kind, pleasant, a far cry from the pain that had been inflicted upon him just moments ago. He had felt the sting, but it had done nothing except push away at the swimming image of the blond-haired man with eyes of blue. _

_His eyes were blue._

_His eyes were blue and they had been full of hope, shock, despair-_

_His eyes were blue and they had been angry._

_His eyes were blue and-_

_His eyes were blue and they wanted to kill him, to stop him-_

_His eyes were blue and had been stunned when he ambushed them. Good._

_ That was not right... _ That...was not right, was it?

He wanted to follow the spangled man- No, he wanted to follow the target-

He wanted to kill-? No, he did not  _ want _ to kill the target, to kill Steve Rogers. Did he?

The pain was growing again and he grimaced, pressing a finger against the sinus point in between his eyes, feeling the sharp stabbing-

“Sorry,” he opened eyes he did not know he had closed to see the targ-, to see him staring at him with blue eyes that were still full of concern. Rogers had said that word and it was taking every effort, far more than the past four days, for him to push the pain away, to not give in-  _ Because if he gave in _ ...

“Tony, Sam's gotten word that he and Sharon found something in D.C.,” the target-, Rogers, said, even though he kept his eyes on him instead of addressing Stark. “Hill's called in a quinjet to get us there ASAP. Sharon's going to stall her CIA handlers for as long as possible, but I get the feeling that we won't have long.”

“Wheels up in five?” Stark set his tools down and held his hands up. A second later, pieces of metal flew from all different directions, making the robotic arm that had been helping Stark open its clamps in a silent surprised chirp, as they formed around Stark, creating the armor that he was known for.

“Yeah, Hill's coming down to keep you company Bucky,” the corners of Rogers' lips twitched in a faint smile-

_ That smile meant that he was stressed and this time was no different. _

_“Hey, just because the extraction is late doesn't mean that Stark was shot down, okay?”_

_“Yeah, sure Buck, whatever you say...” the corners of his lips twitched up in a faint smile and he shook his head._

_“Listen-” he stopped as he heard the familiar roar of propellers and grinned, looking up past the pines to see the silvery gleam of Howard Stark's pride and joy, a little battered, but not the worst for wear._

_“Hey boys, sorry for the delay. Had to shake a few on my way here,” Stark's voice was loud, clear, and definitely laughing. He saw Steve shake his head ruefully before clicking the radio on the backpack Morita was wearing._

_“Only you, Stark, only you.”_

“...I want to go...” he had not realized the words had fallen from his lips until he saw both the targ-, both Rogers and the younger Stark – not Howard, Tony – he reminded himself – stare at him, apprehension clear in Rogers' face and in Stark's posture encased in the armor.

He met those blue eyes and saw the concern in them.

“I don't think...” Rogers closed his mouth, a grimace on his lips before opening it again, “Bucky, we think it's the place where you were kept...on ice...”

He blinked once. Did the target not understand? “I want to go,” he would admit that the word felt a little foreign on his lips, but could feel the pain pushing at him, scratching at him like an itch that would not go away. This was a test, he was sure of it, this was a test and  _ he _ was failing-

“Okay,” the target did not avert his gaze, staring at him with the intensity of a soldier, willing to go to his death-

“ _ I'm with you to the end of the line! _ ”

-it was a test and  _ he _ had passed.

It was a test and he  _ wanted _ _ him _ to pass.

“No, wait, what? Steve-”

“Bucky can come,” Rogers did not look as Stark protested, his voice metallic and tinged under his armored helmet.

“But-”

“You asked if he wanted what you were making for him just minutes ago, Tony,” Rogers was looking at him like an equal-

_ “I'll get a job and all you have to do is shine my shoes...” _

_“Thanks Buck, but I'll be fine...really...”_

“Yeah, but this is for himself- Fine, you know what, fine,” Stark shook his head as he clomped over to the door, “I'm just hoping this doesn't blow up in all of our faces. I know he gets to choose what he wants to do, but Cap, this...this is kind of dangerous.”

“You don't think I know that?” Rogers' eyes never left his and he could feel the pain growing at the same time he could feel something else fighting it- “It could help, or hinder, I know. But sometimes, you have just have a little faith and trust.”

Stark paused in his armor and he saw a small dip in the armored shoulders, “Don't well all, Cap. See you up there in five.” The clomping of booted armor faded away, leaving the two of them standing in the workshop. He stared at Rogers, unblinking and saw the same blue eyes evaluating him back.

His eyes were blue and they asked him what he  _ wanted _ .

_ Revenge, your death, to rip your head-snap neck- why- _ He lifted his metal arm and could feel the gears winding, but there was almost no sound, fixed by Stark just two days ago. It would be easy to attack him with the equipment lying around the room now, to kill him and complete his mission where he now stood. The robotic arms did not stand a chance-

“Gear up soldier,” Rogers' voice, the target's voice, was surprisingly soft and kind, “we've got work to do.”

_ “So, you're ready to follow 'Captain America' into battle?” _

_ “Hell no,” he took a swig of his beer and let the alcohol burn all the way down. “I'm not following Captain America-” And had to resist laughing at the start of surprise from Steve. “I'm following a skinny little kid from Brooklyn _ .”

Following would have been easier, following would have exposed Rogers' back to him – easy enough to attack from behind- The idiot who had followed Rogers was-

He forced himself to move from where he was, walking stiffly forward and brushed past Rogers, past the shrieking need and urge to kill him, snap his neck- “I won't follow you,” he growled out as he headed up the stairs and into the elevator, taking him up to the rooftop.

He missed the sad, hopeful smile on Steve Rogers' face as he was left standing by the door to the workshop.

* * *

The flight had taken less than an hour from New York City to the coordinates Sam had sent, located just outside the D.C. Metro area. Maria had explained that one of the files leaked were the plans for quinjets and the military had snapped them up quickly while the more private sectors were trying to find ways to commercialize and capitalize on them without breaking budgets. Tony had immediately commissioned several for future Avengers' use. This was one of the prototypes that had the reflective technology leftover from the first Helicarrier, from files that had not been released and instead had been kept on Stark Industries servers after the Helicarrier had been decommissioned.

They were a few minutes away from landing and Steve was trying not to pace. He would not admit, but he was wired; it was almost like a buzz within him that made him want bleed some of it off by pacing, not stand and do comm checks with Stark and Banner. At the same time he knew that he was the leader, and the leader always exuded a calm presence in the face of danger – or in this case of a potential lead in figuring out how to help Bucky. He could easily sense and see out of the corner of his eye, his best friend sitting like a silent sentinel staring at him. His metal arm made almost no sound now, but Steve could still hear the soft creak of metallic joints with his enhanced hearing over the nearly silent repulsors of the quinjet, a sign that his friend was still fighting, still resisting.

Steve knew that Bucky had taken an earpiece and comm, but had not said anything except to secure it to himself. “Comm channel secure,” Bruce's voice made him look over and nod to the other man to acknowledge he could hear.

“Set,” he replied, “test one-two-”

“Set,” Bruce replied back giving him a faint smile as he fiddled with the earpiece.

“What, nothing for me?” Tony clomped from where he had been standing by the cockpit entrance, peering through the windows.

“We'll make sure you're on another frequency Tony,” Bruce replied and Steve made adjustments to his own earpiece so that he did not hear a double-echo of his friend's voice. He could see Bucky reaching up to do the same, having probably heard a faint double-echo from Tony's suit's microphone and his actual HUD microphone.

“You sure you're okay with coming along, Bruce?” he asked, ignoring both Tony and what Bucky was doing even though it filled him with a little twisted sense of camaraderie. He knew giving Bucky an earpiece to listen in on their conversations was a risk that he could easily use it to turn against them, but Steve wanted to believe that his friend was fighting and he would do anything to help him and not exclude him. He also knew that everyone else had their concerns, Hill voicing hers explicitly before they had left. It was Tony who had somewhat convinced Maria about letting Bucky participate after they had converged on the rooftop.

“Can't turn back now, right?” Bruce's smile was a little strained, but Steve supposed it was the suddenness of Sam's request that they get to D.C. as soon as possible. Originally it was just Tony and Steve going with Tony set to download or copy any files they found at the site, but Bruce had insisted on coming along, saying that he would be able to quickly identify needed information relevant to Bucky's mental state.

Then Bucky had  _ wanted _ to come along and Steve knew he could not deny his friend the chance. Hill had protested, saying that it could be a trap, that maybe it was something within Bucky's programming to trigger and lead them into an ambush, especially if this was one of the maintenance labs that he had been kept in. Sam and Sharon had not reported anything amiss, but neither had they been inside, waiting for them to get there before Sharon could not keep the CIA off their backs any longer.

“Avengers you are a go,” Hill's voice was crisp and professional as she was their eyes and ears on the op, using Stark Industries' resources at the Tower as their base of operations.

“Acknowledge,” Steve pushed all of his worries and speculation to the back of his mind as he settled himself and reached for his shield, snapping it in place on its holster on his back.

“Sir, touching down,” their pilot, one of the SHIELD agents that Hill had brought into the fold of Stark Industries.

“Roger that,” he moved forward and hit the button to lower the ramp, the sudden wash of wind and quiet thrum of the repulsors blowing into the hold of the quinjet. Securing his helmet, he looked at Bruce.

“Dr. Banner, stay behind me at all times. We don't want to chance the Hulk coming out when this is just a data extraction op,” he said before nodding to Tony, “Stark, perimeter check.”

“On it,” Tony flew off in a burst of red-gold as he jumped the last few feet to the ground, crouching to absorb the light landing as he heard Bruce land behind him and out of the corner of his eye Bucky landing without even a whisper of sound.

“Raptor One-one-four, stand by in cloaking mode. We should be out in half-hour,” he ordered the pilot.

“Acknowledge, Raptor One-one-four cloaking and standing by,” the pilot replied back, “good luck Cap.”

Steve felt the corner of his lips quirk up in a rueful smile as he advanced up the steps of the large bank, noting that it had been converted from an old courthouse style of architecture. His smile grew a little wider as he saw Sam standing by the entrance, a handgun drawn, but held in a relaxed position.

“Cap,” Sam greeted him as he moved forward a little, the smile on his face before it shifted to an alarmed look as he looked beyond him.

Steve knew what he had seen and shook his head, “Bucky wanted to come.”

“But-”

“He  _ wanted _ to come,” he insisted and saw Sam's face pinch a little before he gave a brief nod. Steve did not miss how tight his friend's grip on his gun had become, nor the wariness he now exuded as he smiled briefly to Bruce and to Tony who landed with a quiet metallic thunk behind them.

“Perimeter looks clear, nothing on scanners or infrared except for sleepy residents,” Tony reported and Steve nodded.

“Good, we'll make this quiet and quick before anyone realizes we're here,” he headed towards the double doors, one of which was propped open with a brick probably found in the alleyway beside the bank.

“Sharon's already disabled the security and is scoping out the place,” Sam reported, “police patrol this early in the morning hours are usually few and far in between, but she's managed to re-direct them elsewhere. Unfortunately that also gives us about a time frame of thirty-three minutes before her superiors figure out that we found a lead and send teams here or whatever the CIA does in this case.”

“Did you find-” his super soldier serum-enhanced senses told him to move before not even a second later, Bucky suddenly brushed him past him and nearly knocked into his shoulder. He could hear the faint grinds of churning metal in his arm as he saw the frozen, almost terrible blank look on his best friend's face. “Bucky-”

“Whoa,” Sam whispered, but Steve quickly followed as Bucky half wrenched the gate into the bank off of its hinge and stalked deeper into the bank.

“Bucky, wait!” he called out.

Almost the same time Sam shouted, “Sharon get the hell out of the way and don't shoot?” His friend shot him a quick look and Steve nodded, “Don't shoot! The Winter Soldier is a friendly-I can't believe I just said that...”

There was a methodical stride in Bucky's steps as Steve hurried to catch up and turned the corner to see his former neighbor, ex-SHIELD, current CIA Agent, Kate, or rather Sharon, backed into a corner, gun drawn and pointed directly at Bucky. Bucky himself was ignoring her and seemed focused on the panel that was draped in wires and equipment that looked like it was to hack it.

“Agent, put the gun down,” he stepped forward towards Sharon who looked half-terrified, but her posture and steady stance told him otherwise.

“Captain, that's a known hostile-”

“Bucky's not-”

The clicking, cranking sound made them all stop and look to see the vault doors opening, Bucky's flesh-and-blood hand having been acknowledged by the vault's security systems. It was also displaying an account number, name, that Steve saw said [Lukin, Alec], and a face that was clearly Bucky's, but with his hair cut short. He realized that for all of the assassin and spycraft that his friend had engaged in, one must have had palm-print access to the secure vaults. The bank was known internationally and he supposed that this was also the place where the powerful in Washington D.C. stored some of their money. Why not give access to an assassin, amongst the powerful elite, and hide him in plain sight.

However, Bucky did not move an inch from where his hand hovered above the palm-print reader, staring ahead at the open vault doors. Steve followed his gaze and only took a single step forward when he too froze at what he saw. Amongst the vault boxes of varying sizes was a cryostasis chamber and a simple looking chair. Surrounding the chair were wires, glowing lights, and mechanized equipment that looked like it belonged in a nightmare of an operating table.

They had found the lair of the Winter Soldier.

_* * *_

**Author's Notes:**

Credit for the way Bucky's arm works goes towards devil_wears_winchester who's story “Beginnings” is an inspiration in this chapter. You can find the story here: http:// archive ofour own (dot)org/ works/ 1578968

 


	8. Chapter 8

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 8_

 

It was Tony who took the first steps in, Bruce following in his wake before Steve snapped out of his reverie and forced himself to walk into the golden-silvery gleaming safe-deposit boxes lined walls. It looked like an ordinary vault save for the nightmarish contraptions, tubes, electronics, and things that he did not recognize except for perhaps  _ torture _ piled around the room.

“Hey man,” Sam's hand suddenly on his made him come to himself as he realized he had stopped again and looked at him to see concern etched across his features, “you okay?”

Steve nodded numbly as he gathered himself and forced himself to stare elsewhere, anywhere but at the chair he innately  _ knew _ HYDRA had sat Bucky in to be tortured, brainwashed, programmed, whatever. “Keep watch outside, we're using secure channel three,” he ordered and Sam nodded.

“Got it,” his friend lifted his hand from his arm and gave him a wan smile, “just...it's going to be okay, Steve...”

“...Yeah...” he breathed out as he forced himself to move across the room to where Tony had found a panel of sorts and was sticking a thumb drive into it and not looking elsewhere. Bruce however, had gingerly approached the chair and cryotube, his expression pinched and concentrated, but did not seem to be turning green. Steve turned his attention elsewhere and jerked his head at the thumb drive Tony seemed to be half staring at, a small pop-up screen scrolling with lines that looked like it was half in english, half in cyrillic.

“Anything?” he asked, trying to keep his voice calm as he glanced back. Bucky had not even moved a single inch after the doors had opened, almost as if he had completely shut down.

“-cure channel 3, Steve, got us?” Sam's voice suddenly patched through and Steve raised his wrist.

“Loud and clear,” he replied.

“Estimate twenty minutes,” Sharon's familiar voice piped through his earpiece, calm and professional unlike how she had greeted him for the year that they were neighbors. She still sounded a little angry and Steve knew it was because of Bucky's presence and the fact that he was the Winter Soldier. Hill had never really told him how much damage Bucky had caused in the Triskelion and on the Helicarriers before intercepting him in the bowels of the third one, but he had overheard a chance conversation between her and Coulson about how he had almost gotten air support before someone wiped them out.

“Roger,” he acknowledged and lowered his arm. “Stark?”

Tony ignored his inquiry, “Hill, you getting this?”

“Yeah, I'm recognizing basic command lines used in programming various agencies' encryption. The others...I'm seeing AIM, HammerTech, even StarkTech-”

“Don't say that, just...don't say that,” Tony's voice was flat and devoid of emotions from the Iron Man suit and Steve glanced sharply at him. Tony seemed to notice his look before he sighed, “Bucky's arm is half composed of StarkTech. Like really old StarkTech that I know Dad worked on and gave to the government and probably to SHIELD. The other half of that arm is modern StarkTech...stuff...I wrote into SHIELD's computers, gave to Fury for the Avengers Initiative...”

Tony lifted an armored finger and poked the screen as he shook his head. A disquieting sense of deep seeded anger started to fill Steve as he stared at the lines of computer language he did not understand. He was annoyed and angry that Tony found things like this, that it was  _ his _ technology that had been put into Bucky; that maybe he could have found something earlier to prevent it – after all, wasn't the vaunted Tony Stark always crowing about how 'privatization of world peace' was his domain? That his arrogance in keeping the world safe could have prevented HYDRA from taking over – from infecting SHIELD and destroying-

He shuddered and twitched a little as he clenched a fist and forced himself to calm down. Yes, there was StarkTech in whatever Tony had found, yes, the fact that there was StarkTech from Howard's days, and yes it was proof that HYDRA had been latching onto the technology SHIELD had and used it for their own nefarious purposes, but...could he really blame Tony for that?

A small vicious, irrational, part of him said yes, he should, because Tony Stark, self-proclaimed genius, playboy, philanthropist should have seen it coming. Was paranoid enough and smart enough to build a suit of armor out of scrapes in the Afghanistan desert – was smart enough to outwit Loki, outwit his opponents and survive so  _ why the hell could he not keep an eye on his technology?! _

“You really don't think I'm angry, Steve? That I  _ hate _ that something like this is in front of me? That this?! This is a fucking slap in the face of everything I've been trying  _ not _ to do since becoming Iron Man?! Hell, even before that?” Tony hissed quietly next to him and Steve blinked, startled as he realized he had said the last few words that he had been thinking in his mind.

“Tony-”

“No, no,” the glowing eyes of Iron Man turned to him, staring at him with its flat expressionless faceplate, “ _ you _ don't get to ride your high horse in this case and blame me, blame everyone for what's happening-”

“This was  _ before _ you became Iron Man! Before you decided that Stark Industries would not create weapons, oh, what is it? Have a bigger stick?! Well, here you go, Mister Stark, here's your bigger stick!” He pointed at the chair and indirectly at Bucky, “How do you like it?!”

“I'm not the one to blame!” Stark growled back defensively, “If there's anyone to blame, just look at yourself!”

“What?!”

“You're the one who dropped your  _ best _ friend into the ravine!”

“I didn't-”

“Couldn't save him?! Couldn't catch him with your fucking super soldier enhanced serum enough to pull him from the train?! Couldn't decide that Zola just had to die because-”

“Zola had information-”

“You let him  _ fall _ !” even with the armor on, Steve could feel the heat of the furious glare leveled at him, burning with his own searing anger at the  _ arrogance _ , the assumption that he  _ had let _ Bucky fall, “you-”

“Hey!” the sudden loud bang made them spring apart, jumping at the sound as both turned to see Bruce glaring at them, having made the sound by smashing his fist into the safe deposit boxes, “stop it, both of you.”

Steve winced at the sudden unexpected pressure blooming across his temples and absently rubbed at it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Stark shake his metal head as if to clear a phantom ring of sorts. “What-”

Bruce stared at them, shaking his head. “I knew it,” he gestured roughly to the chair and all of its nightmarish equipment around it, “something didn't feel right when we walked in and I thought it was just because this thing looks like a surreal dream from someone's sick twisted torture fantasy, but...” He took a deep breath and gestured to Stark, “Tony, scan the equipment around the chair.”

“Uh...okay,” Steve noted that Tony sounded absolutely shaken, but as he raised his armored hand and the repulsor point glowed a little, he saw that his hand did not shake or give any indication that he had been disturbed. He was silent for a few seconds before grounding out, “What...the...hell, Bruce, are you sure?!”

“What,” he looked between the two of them as the thumb drive beeped a confirmation of finishing a transfer and Steve pulled it out without looking, stuffing it into one of his hardcase utility pouches.

“I, uh, kind of smelled it, but wasn't too sure until you two started to fight,” Bruce confirmed to Tony before turning to look at him, “Steve, some of the tech inside whatever's in this is Tesseract-based, or even like the Chitauri sceptre.”

“But...” Steve trailed off as the implications hit him. They all knew that with the Hulk in him, it augmented his senses to the point where he easily was able to smell trouble, danger, or even practically fear at times. Bruce really did not talk about it much, still having trouble at times reconciling living with the Other Guy versus his augmented senses that he felt sometimes hindered or helped. The fact that Bruce was saying that whatever equipment was in the chair or near the cryotube that Bucky had been subjected to had Tesseract and Chitauri technology... He knew Howard was fascinated by the small magazine of HYDRA weaponry bullets he had taken from Schmidt's base, but he had not really concerned himself with what happened to it afterwards.

The Tesseract had been lost when he and Schmidt fought, and Steve remembered it clearly, in his mind, only about three years ago. A wormhole opened in the middle of the bomber, sucking Schmidt into who knew where. It was similar to the wormhole opening in the skies of New York, but then again, the Chitauri had come through. The fact that there had not been any technology remotely like the Tesseract within SHIELD that he knew of, or anywhere else since waking up from being frozen had spared him no amounts of relief...until now.

Fury had said that all Phase Two weaponry had been destroyed after the portal closed in the aftermath of the battle above the skies of New York. SHIELD had even dedicated themselves to making sure that any leftover Chitauri tech was not left lying around for some random passerby to pick up and study. They even had teams of agents hunting it since then.

But that apparently was all another lie. Lies upon lies buried upon even more lies and half-truths. He suspected that Fury might have known about some of the tech being loaded into the Slingshot; but what Maria had said days ago regarding that the Slingshot being completely false reawakened the bitterness and anger at how utterly played they all had been to HYDRA's tune.

What Bruce was saying...Tesseract technology in the equipment clearly meant to torture and probably suppress Bucky's memories...along with the fact that HYDRA had been operating in SHIELD's shadow for the last seventy years? Had they extracted all of that technology without Howard's knowledge? He wanted to believe that his long-dead friend did not know and was not culpable in what had happened to Bucky. He knew that Howard guarded his advance technology like a mother hen, but at times was also utterly careless with what he did with it in his excitement to advance the human race forward.

For all he knew, Howard could have accidentally left HYDRA tech out for an assistant to steal or could have inadvertently signed off on paperwork that someone shoved under his nose with the idea of how it could change the world or some falsified truth as HYDRA experimented on Bucky in secret. Anton Vanko's thirst for profit had proved that sometimes Howard did not have the best judgment in people – though he also proved he had the power to make a person's life miserable by deporting and denying them the necessary technology. Had his friend discover the truth behind one of those papers or experiments he signed off on? Had he discovered where the tech he was trying to reverse engineer was going towards? Was that why HYDRA had killed him and his wife Maria and made it look like an accident? Because maybe he knew too much or had discovered too much?

“...If Dad-”

“No,” Steve cut Tony off sharply, his lips thinning as he glared at the chair and equipment surrounding it, “Howard wouldn't have...he... It wouldn't be the first time someone deceived him.” He looked at Stark and saw him reluctantly nod.

“Right. Anton Vanko, right,” Tony sounded calm, but Steve knew he was also trying to convince himself that aside from being a cold, distant father, he was not part of this whole systemic torture and brainwashing of Captain America's best friend. “Goddamn HYDRA...I fucking hate them.”

Steve made a noise of agreement as he absently lifted a finger and touched one of the black-silvery metallic thing that looked like it was supposed to wrap around half of a head. “Bruce, can you-”

“Yeah, you guys downloaded all of the necessary files, I'm just trying to figure out which parts to take so we can figure out if there's a way to deconstruct it and maybe help restore Barnes' memories,” Bruce had moved over and was carefully examining the pieces, frowning as he tried to figure out what pieces were worth salvaging and which ones were completely unnecessary.

“Seven minutes- wait...” Sharon's voice piped over before she trailed off and Steve glanced at both Tony and Bruce. There was a few seconds of silence before Steve held his wrist up.

“Agent 13 report,” he ordered.

“Shit,” he could hear the tension in her tone before the sounds of a brief scramble, “that's not the CIA, that's HYDRA!”

“You sure?” he heard the faint exclamation from Sam followed by what sounded like doors closing and something heavy being moved.

“I'm pretty sure being shot at wasn't your first clue!” the brief sound of gunfire punctuated the comm.

“Shit! You got a second piece I can use?!”

“Negative,” Sharon's voice had turned hard and professional as she huffed a strained breath through the comm,”Captain, your  _ friend _ deliberately tripped the alarm scanning himself into the vault- I knew it was too easy...”

“It's not Bucky's fault-” Steve looked up at the sudden movement in his peripheral vision to see Bucky deliberately punching something into the palm scanner before the gentle hiss of several of the safe deposit boxes opened on the opposite side of the room. They were filled with all sorts of weaponry and he saw Bucky walk over without a sound, plucking an older-model sniper rifle, Soviet-era designed, his hands moving over to make quick adjustments. He reached down again and pulled out an assault rifle with a grenade launcher underbelly, several magazines, two USPs, and an Uzi, securing them on his persons in a very familiar way before walking out of the vault.

“Did he...”

“He just did...”

“Bucky,” Steve ignored what Bruce and Tony were saying, surprise evident on Bruce's face, and hurried out, catching up to Bucky as he walked in deliberate silence down the halls back to the entrance. He wanted to reach out, to reassure his friend that they were in this together, but something made him hold back, walk just half a pace behind Bucky as he made adjustments to the grenade launcher he carried. Steve watched the steadiness of the sniper rifle strapped across his back. The strap was worn, bits of dirt caked on the butt end signaling that it was a favored weapon, but the weapon itself was polished, oiled, and clean. It was definitely an older model and Steve suspected that it was also the rifle that had put three bullets into Nick Fury.

“Agent 13 was correct,” the words were so quiet that even with his enhanced hearing, Steve barely heard it as Bucky paused at the threshold where he had half-ripped the teller gate off. “She was also incorrect,” he continued and Steve saw his metallic hand curl into a fist. He turned his head back a little, the same terrible blank gaze in his eyes. Steve met that blank gaze with a clear one of his own and saw the metal hand clench and unclench. “Stay out of my way,” Bucky finally growled out, pain evident behind his words.

The warning was clear that his friend would not hesitate to shoot him, would not hesitate to complete his mission even with the programming was evident in his words as he stalked forward towards where Sharon and Sam were taking cover behind the marble pillars. He saw Sharon peer out from her cover before doing a double-take as she looked back and Steve was about to tell her not to shoot Bucky when his friend suddenly tossed two magazines towards Sam behind the opposite pillar.

“What...” Sam started, but trailed off as Bucky wordlessly reached over to his left side, drew one of the USPs and slid it towards him. “Uh...thanks?” Sam looked gobsmacked as he absently pocketed the magazines and hefted the handgun, flicking the safety off.

Before anyone could do anything, Bucky hefted the grenade launcher and opened the heavy bulletproof glass doors to the bank, firing rapidly in a semi-circle with his other hand. Steve watched as the grenades launched themselves with quiet thunks before they exploded, sending bright fiery debris, screams, and people into the air.

“Shit! It's him!” he heard more than one HYDRA agent shout as Bucky ducked back in, casually propping himself against the middle pillar that bisected the entrance and checked his magazine.

The response was almost instantaneous as bullets pounded the glass, sending spidery cracks and splintering branches everywhere, but did not shatter under the assault. Steve, however, took advantage of the weakening glass and the fiery illumination of destroyed armored vehicles and threw his shield. It shattered the glass before bouncing off of one of the vehicles, hitting several HYDRA agents before rebounding back to him. But he was already on the move, leaping past the broken pieces of metal and jagged edges, catching his shield mid-flight.

He vaulted over one agent, punching another in the face before spinning slamming his shield into the face of another, dropping the agent into the ground. “Stark!” he called out as he saw Tony zip out of the bank, firing repulsor shots this way and that as he flew into the air. “I need a perimeter formed two blocks down-”

“On it,” Stark replied as he fired several more repulsor blasts, taking out another armored vehicle farther back and flew off, “there's a lot of people here-shit Cap, they've got Centipede soldiers with them!”

Steve grunted in acknowledgment as he ducked behind a pillar and threw his shield again, catching two HYDRA agents in the stomach before he threw one over his shoulder, the agent crying out as he hit the side of the brick wall of the bank and fell to the ground unmoving.

His senses prickled as he ducked and rolled to the side, feeling the passage of a grenade launching from where Bucky was before bracing himself as he caught his shield. The grenade exploded, sending several agents flying into the air. He knew Bucky had told him to stay out of the way, a clear indication that he would shoot him as an enemy, a combat situation not doing his programming any favors, but Steve wanted to believe that even in the middle of this, his best friend was still fighting the Red Room programming.

Bullets continued to fly in the air, but Steve ducked and weaved, ignoring the near misses and bits of concrete, asphalt shrapnel that embedded and cut into him as he threw his shield again and fought his way past several HYDRA agents. He glanced quickly back to see both Sharon and Sam firing at the HYDRA agents who got a little too close to the exposed entrance, making sure that they did not need his help. He could see the frustration in both of their eyes, especially Sam whom he knew had not brought his wings with him, having left it in the Tower on his most recent trip to Washington D.C. This was supposed to be a simple recon and Steve had not thought of taking Sam's wings with him when they left the Tower.

“Grenade!” Sam called out before the flash of a silvery arm was visible from the entrance followed seconds later by screams as the grenade exploded back where it had come from.

“Bruce-”

“Here, just...trying to keep calm,” Bruce's voice was audible over the sound of gunfire, but it sounded incredibly strained.

“You're doing fine buddy,” Tony reassured him over the comm. The Avengers knew that Bruce turning into the Hulk in the middle of this firefight would not go well, even though it would make the gunfight a lot easier. This was suburban D.C., half filled with businesses and residential areas.

“Local police and agencies are already responding. I've notified them that there are HYDRA agents along with Centipede soldiers. They're finding some roadblocks-” Maria piped up from the Tower.

“On it,” Stark replied, “sorry, can't keep the perimeter-”

“Do it,” Steve cut Tony off, “we need them here to evacuate the civilians.” He prayed to God that most of the sleeping residents were holed up in their houses and apartments and  _ not _ venturing outside when the first shots had been fired. His enhanced senses told him that some of the immediately buildings had minor damage, and some bullets had gone into windows, but a majority of the area was not affected. He brought his shield up as he heard the distinct whine of a minigun starting up and crouched, pulling himself as close to his shield before he heard the pinging sound of bullets hitting his shield. He would have dealt with it like he had on the causeway if there were not an army of HYDRA agents between him and the minigun, liable to shoot his legs off – even that maneuver had been foolhardy and born out of desperation.

“Minigun!” he called out, “Sam, Sharon can you-”

The very loud report of a sniper rifle suddenly dwarfed the rapid-fire pinging of the minigun before it was silenced and Steve risked a quick look back towards the entrance to the bank to see Bucky, crouched in a very familiar pose, his well-worn sniper rifle in his hand. The grenade launcher was nowhere to be seen so he supposed that it was out of ammo. Haunting blue eyes met his own and Steve could not help but crack a tiny smile and jaunty wave at the save.

He saw the point where momentary confusion lit across Bucky's stoic features, the tentative hope suddenly quashed by pain in his friend's eyes before his grip on the rifle wavered.

If his hatred for what HYDRA had done to his best friend had not already solidified, Steve knew it would have right then and there as he refocused his attention back to the HYDRA agents. He noted that some had automatically ducked behind the flaming vehicles or buildings once the sniper rifle had gone off, still firing, but more blindly now. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught several black oblique grenades being thrown in his direction and ran, the force of the combined explosion blasting into his back and sending him tumbling down the stairs before he righted himself and ducked behind a pillar, bullets barely missing his feet.

“Cap-”

“I'm fine,” he called out roughly at Sharon's concern, choking a little at the cloud of blackened smoke as he peered quickly out, “there's a cluster of-”

“Retreat!” one of the agents suddenly called out and Steve straightened, peering out again to see all of the HYDRA agents that had hidden behind the destroyed wrecks of vehicles and building fronts, backing away, still occasionally firing, but mostly just backing away.

“What-”

“Shit, these guys hit hard! Incoming!” Stark's voice popped over the comm again, “I'm stuck here trying to get them off of the backup, but looks like they're headed your way-”

“Stark, HYDRA agents retreating-”

“They look like Terminator dudes...” Sam breathed out as in the inky darkness of the early morning hour, a small number of bobbing glowing red eyes approached.

“Start humming the theme and I'll shoot you myself,” Sharon muttered over the comm. “Whoa...hey, uh-”

“Steve, watch-!”

That was all the warning Steve got before he instinctively whirled and held his shield up, gritting his teeth at the sudden force and weight of Bucky's punch hammering down on him. However, instead of it being the metal arm this time, it was his flesh and blood one before Steve realized his mistake. Too late as he felt his shield arm twist horribly, pain shooting up as it nearly broke from the force, Bucky's metal one ripping it from his grip and tossing it away.

“Bucky!” he shouted, ducking underneath a glint of a knife before blocking fast quick strikes as he stumbled and twisted away. “Stop! I'm not-” He grunted as Bucky's metal fist caught him in the ribs and staggered back, “I'm not your-” He felt, more than heard the bullets being fired, but nonetheless, grabbed Bucky's wrists and  _ pulled _ , throwing the two of them out of the way of the advancing Centipede soldiers.

Bucky snarled and ripped his wrist out his grip before dropping his knife to his other and Steve moved to block the blade, before his friend suddenly used his freed hand to throw the knife backwards, killing a Centipede soldier that had been trying to aim at them, before he reached around and grabbed the Uzi that had been tucked away.

Steve used every trick he knew and weaved past the rapid fire of the Uzi buzzing against his ears as he grappled with his friend, kicking and blocking kicks thrown at him as he twisted inward and reached out. His hand burned as he grabbed the muzzle of the still firing Uzi and forced it outwards – killing several more Centipede soldiers that had tried to ambush them before the gun clicked empty and released his grip on it as Bucky threw it away.

He could hear the chatter from the others in his earpiece, but could not pay attention to it as Bucky stalked forward again, striking with fast furious intent and Steve blocked as best as he could. Of all of the times the programming had to kick in- He cut that thought off as he twisted out of the path of the USP firing towards his head, trying to find where Bucky had thrown his shield. His arm ached and he was pretty sure it was at least fractured, but Steve pushed past the pain and kicked at Bucky's right arm, the arm holding the compact, but powerful handgun, the flesh-and-blood arm.

He knew that there must have been no way for his strike to connect, because he knew how Bucky fought, but was surprised when the USP fell away, his kick damaging Bucky's wrist as he cried out and glared daggers at him. “Come on Bucky...fight it,” he muttered as his friend advanced forward again-

Only for Steve to meet him half way and knock him to the ground; out of the way of a gigantic  _ roar  _ followed by the green blur of the Hulk smashing his way past whatever was left of the entrance to the bank and onto the pavement of the street before it. Steve only had a quick glance of the Centipede soldiers focusing their fire on the new threat the Hulk presented; roaring again and unceremoniously grabbed one before waving the soldier around like a human meat flail, smashing others with it. Steve's vision was obscured a second later by a boot coming towards his face and he rolled.

He reached out, grabbing Bucky's foot and twisted, sending him back to the ground and trying to reach around for a sleeper hold before he felt his own foot twist painfully and kicked with his other one only for it to meet the hard unyielding object of his metal arm. Steve bucked, pressing his hands to the ground and flipped over, loosening the grip Bucky had on both of his feet as he landed on the ground and twisted, kneeling with his hands in an 'x' to block an ax kick. He broke it, flipping his arms and grunted as he felt the sharp edge of  _ something _ rip through the fabric of his suit, the drip of blood- Just as stars exploded across his vision and he tasted blood in his mouth. He staggered back and caught a glimpse of Bucky holding a piece of rocky debris in his hand, having used it to smash against his face, before his best friend pressed his advantage.

Steve found himself stumbling as dizziness assaulted him from the sudden hard blow and held his hands up, warding away the sudden swooping memory of bullies who had gotten the first scrappy blow in the back alleys of Brooklyn, except it was Bucky who had gotten that first blow. He shook the stars away as he willed himself to focus on Bucky who had paused, staring at him with something akin to a stricken look on his face.

“Fight it!” Steve shouted, making Bucky flinch before a shuttered look appeared on his face and he lashed out, conveniently knocking one Centipede soldier that had survived the Hulk's current rampage, out with his metal fist before charging at him.

It was a wildly telegraphed one and Steve grimly smiled, his mouth swimming in the coppery taste of blood, as he realized that he was getting through. He easily ducked the charge and grabbed Bucky's right arm and pulled the opposite direction, feeling the pop of bone and of a neatly done dislocation of his shoulder. His best friend howled in pain as he stumbled away and Steve grimaced. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry...but-”

He caught the metal fist swinging at him with ease and gripped the powerful metal with both hands as Bucky weakly lashed out, trying to fight at the same time trying to still kill him. “I'm sorry...” he muttered as he saw the fighting pain in Bucky's eyes, the blank look slowly giving way to despair, to a hungry need for him to end it, to finish it and not let him linger like this. “I...can't...” he could not believe that Bucky would ask him to do this, “I'm sorry...I'm-”

“...Finish it...” he heard the inhuman growl of the Winter Soldier as the icy blank look returned and Steve shook his head, his hands trembling against the pressure of the metal arm he was trapping.

“You're fighting it, please, fight it...you're stronger than-”

“I will keep killing...you...until you...” Bucky's teeth were bared in a rictus of torment as he weakly tried to move his injured arm, but got no response.

“And I'll keep protecting you, even if you can't,” Steve said before a flicker of recognition washed across the pain-lined face and for a brief moment he saw his best friend, the one before the war, before everything, before they were just two carefree boys, brothers really, Steve'n'Bucky, Bucky'n'Steve...

And the flicker disappeared as Bucky's eyes suddenly rolled into the back of his head and Steve barely held him up by his metal arm, having finally succumbed to the agony of his programming. Steve could only shake his head and steel himself at how  _ hard _ his friend had fought, that maybe, maybe now there was more hope than before. Maybe he would be able to finally help him with the information they had found in the lair of the Winter Soldier.

_* * *_

**Author's Notes:**

Dare to be badass.

 


	9. Chapter 9

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 9_

 

It was several hours later that Steve and the others found themselves back in New York at the Tower after what had happened in Washington D.C. He was sitting outside on one of the lounge chairs that Tony had just replaced after several had been damaged and deemed not-salvageable by Bucky's crash-landing from the main penthouse area above. There was a wastebasket next to him as he ripped out the recent page of the sketch he was trying to do and threw it in. Several crumpled balls of sketch paper were already in the wastebasket and Steve knew he should feel guilty for wasting so much paper, but was too numb to care.

His left arm was in a sling, wrapped up tight with an ace bandage to prevent most movement; it had been fractured when Bucky had all but ripped the shield from him in an effort to kill him at the bank. His left hand was also wrapped in a much softer gauze, superficial burns already healing from when he had grabbed the muzzle of the Uzi. A giant pad of gauze was covering his right side from his head wound as well as more gauze and bandages covering various parts of his body due to shrapnel that had pierced through his armor during the harried fight. The headache and dizziness that had assaulted him earlier was waning and his arm was not hurting as much. He knew his body well enough that most of the bandages would be gone in two days as the serum did its work and healed him.

The fight had tapered off considerably after Bucky had fallen unconscious, the Hulk making short work of the Centipede soldiers. Stark had reported that the remaining HYDRA agents had fled, though law enforcement had rounded several up for questioning. Steve's concern had been more the Hulk who had glared around, wanting new challenges before Stark had arrived and between the two of them managed to calm him down enough for Bruce to revert back.

It also provided him the opportunity to call down their cloaked quinjet and keep Bruce's modesty intact as well as hide Bucky in it at the first opportunity. He did not want  _ anyone _ to know that the Winter Soldier was here. Sam, Sharon, and Tony had all boarded, grim looks preventing any other law enforcement agents from entering the quinjet, while he had talked with the FBI Agent-in-Charge of the taskforce that Maria had called for reinforcements. The lead agent noted his statement that the bank was HYDRA along with an abbreviated version of what had happened during the firefight. He had seen the agent, a hard-nosed man who was trying very hard to keep his composure and not demand information, wanting to ask him more questions, but had deftly directed him to Stark Industries and to Maria for answers before boarding the quinjet and leaving.

After everyone had been patched up, debriefed by Maria who made notes and was going to call Coulson about the latest development – and probably also inform Fury wherever he was – they all had went their separate ways in the Tower. The information on the thumb drive was given to Bruce, but Steve had told him to rest for a while since he had a Hulk transformation that was not entirely voluntary. Bucky had been instantly sedated on their way back and was still sedated as he was placed in a different bedroom in the tower. The consideration of putting Bucky in Bruce's lab to monitor his brain activity and so forth had been on everyone's minds, but after what Steve had seen in that bank vault; he did not want any type of hospital, lab, anything clinical of a setting for his friend to wake up to. It certainly explained why Bucky had almost destroyed the bed he had first woken up in and also why he had not really budged from his place in the main area of the penthouse for the last few days.

Steve glanced down at the beginnings of his latest sketch, the night skies of the city growing lighter as dawn approached, and crumpled up the drawing once more, tearing it out of his sketchpad and throwing it into the wastebasket next to him. He rubbed his eyes with his fingers, before absently chewing on the end of his pencil as he stared at the fresh blank page. He knew he should have been sleeping, but at the same time, was even more determined to sketch out the face that Bucky had been seeing in his flashes of memories – even more determined to help regain his memories.

“Didn't you grow up with the mentality of 'waste not, want not'?” he looked up to see the door to the patio part of the balcony opening and Sharon stepping out, two mugs of coffee in her hands. She closed the door with her foot before gesturing with a mug to the chair across from him.

“Go ahead,” he nodded as she took her seat, “and yes I did, but unfortunately this type of scrap paper tends to rip when I sketch in it.”

“Why not get a different one?” she asked as she slid over a cup for him and reached into her pocket, pulling out several various packets of sugar and creamer, “don't really know how you take your coffee, but here.”

“I thought being my neighbor for a year and half would have made you an expert? Spy cameras and all?” he felt a tired grin tug at the corner of his lips as she rolled her eyes and sipped her own. He answered her previous question, “I was recommended this type of paper when I first got defrosted, guess it kind of stuck with me, old habits...”

“I was watching the outdoor cameras for threats,” she replied to his question, “but a girl can dream sometimes, right?”

He felt a bit of heat flush against cheeks as she grinned over the rim of her mug at her statement. When Fury had notified him via his phone of hidden cameras, he had thought only the obvious ones in the kitchen, living room, and maybe his bedroom, but in his bathroom as she was implying? That...was a bit personal – but after everything he supposed that HYDRA or even SHIELD wanted to keep a close eye on him.

“Fury actually only had cameras outdoors. There were bugs indoors, but no cameras,” her expression turned a little serious, “for what it's worth, sorry for the deception.”

Steve took the olive branch for what it was and dumped three packets of sugar into his cup before stirring it with the remnants of the sugar packets. “No harm done. Just...wished it wasn't like that...”

Her smile was a little bitter and a little sad, “I...can't relate. Kind of grew up in the business after all... It's hard to trust people except probably those you're related to. And now, after HYDRA, after all of this...maybe a little harder still.”

“Maria told me that you had cousins in the different branches, even internationally?” he made sure to word it in a question instead of stating it to at least hopefully give her the illusion that she did not have to answer it.

The sad smile became a little brighter as she shook her head, “You don't have to keep my honor and secrets intact,  _ neighbor _ .”

Steve laughed lightly, still feeling a little bit of heat creeping up his neck at her teasing, “Sorry, just, not exactly used to making conversation outside of mission briefs and that sort of thing.”

“Not even when you asked me for a coffee date?” she asked, her voice innocent before she shook her head, the sadness and bitterness all but gone from her bright smile, “I'm kidding Cap-”

“Steve,” he interrupted, “just...Steve. Captain, Cap, feels too formal and too mission-like. Plus we  _ were _ neighbors for at least a year, right?”

She shrugged, but nodded, “All right, Steve. And Sharon for the record. Not Kate.”

“I figured,” he replied dryly, “Natasha told me your name before she disappeared into the winds.”

“Oh?” for a second Steve thought he saw a bit of nervous hesitation on her face, but a second later it was gone and he figured maybe she was also as nervous as he was.

“Yeah, but I suppose I didn't really know your last name when you were Kate either. Just Kate-the-neighbor-who-happens-to-be-a-SHIELD-agent,” he shrugged, feeling a twinge of pain shoot through his still healing arm and ignored it. “You didn't really work in the infectious disease ward, right?”

“I planted bugs, does that count?” she deadpanned and Steve laughed.

“Nat and I are long-time friends,” she continued, sobering a little as she swallowed a mouthful of coffee, “she gave me lessons while I grew up in the halls of the Triskelion and various SHIELD bunkers. Granted, I didn't really see her that often, but she was nice to me. Didn't treat me like the kid mascot on the base or because of my long family's history of being in SHIELD or various intelligence agencies.”

He took a sip of the coffee she had brought him, savoring the taste. Good coffee, even though the caffeine did not affect him, was still rare in his mind. He and Bucky used to try to make their own coffee with burnt bread after reading it in a  _ Horatio Hornblower _ book, and the rations out in the field were not exactly great for coffee. Tony's never-ending supply of coffee had variety of beans, but he preferred the simpler mild-roasted ones. “You've got family in right now-wait, sorry, that's kind of callous of me with this whole thing about SHIELD and HYDRA...”

She gave him a faint smile, “It's okay. My parents retired a few years ago before the whole thing went down – actually probably about a few months before you were found. Most of my cousins kind of don't exactly trust me, but then again, they are spies for a living. I've got a second cousin who's working with Uncle Phil, er, Agent Coulson in London right now, so he's doing well I think. And Agent Coulson's not really my uncle, just you know, family friend uncle-type.”

“Only child?”

“Yep,” she nodded, “parents didn't exactly have the luxury of having another child after me...spycraft and all.”

“Sorry-”

“Don't be,” she shook her head, “it's the business and the life.” She fell silent for a moment before flicking a finger at him in a vague manner, “So, how about you?”

Steve half rolled his eyes and grinned, “I'm sure they've got stories about me-”

“Well, considering I was your neighbor, I kind of figured out a few things about you – you like experimenting when cooking.”

“People say try stuff, so I try stuff,” Steve was a little embarrassed that all of the times he was actually in his apartment in D.C. she had probably smelled some of the foodstuffs he had been trying to cook – sometimes without success and more than a few burnt dinners.

“And, books tell you one thing, people tell you another. It's easier to ask the source,” she finished, looking at him directly. “So, how about it?”

“I guess...” he floundered a little, not knowing  _ what _ to tell Sharon. Somehow, a very small part of him thought it was a little easier to talk to Peggy when discreet glances or even small innocuous conversations revealed a lot about the other during the war and even before when he was training at Camp Lehigh. Women were far more direct than seventy years ago, but then again, they also had seventy years to put the women's liberation movement to good use and make gains – though Steve did agree that it was still a very much male dominated society that needed to at least change, or be equalized. It also did not help that he liked Sharon before she was revealed to be a fellow SHIELD agent and tasked to keep an eye on him to boot.

“Well, you are an artist,” he saw her pull one of the crumpled pieces of paper out of the wastebasket and flatten it, staring at it, “self-taught?”

“And a couple of art classes before I freelanced sketching cartoons,” he flipped to the beginning of his sketchbook, and turned the notebook towards her showing a of rough cartoons he had sketched earlier in the year during downtime in between trips to search for Bucky. It was a little crude, but essentially what he thought of HYDRA.

Sharon laughed, “This is so true. Did you submit this?”

“Not to the major papers, but Tony asked if he could post it on one of the online forums he frequents...buzzfeed or whatever the heck that means,” Steve replied. The internet was very informational as he had told Sam a year ago when he first met him, but it was also something he took in small doses. Everyone had an opinion and everyone thought their opinion was the right one. He learned to at least digest the different sides and come up with his own opinion, but sometimes avoided the internet because of rampant misinformation.

“Ah, so that's the origin point,” Sharon nodded, “well, I can tell you variations of what Stark posted for you did make the rounds at the CIA and probably everywhere else, but don't worry, I'm not telling.” She took hold of the page and glanced at him, “May I?”

“Sure,” he shrugged, allowing her to flip through the pages. It was actually a little refreshing, especially since he knew most people didn't even deign to ask, just silently ask or not even, before browsing his sketchbook. Granted, he did leave this one in the main common room so theoretically it was accessible to everyone, but sometimes he kind of wished that people asked before touching other people's things.

“These are beautiful-is that the one at the exhibit-”

“Yeah. It was a pretty impressive mural of my men, I figured I try to sketch it from memory-”

“Memory?! Wow...that's a really great memory, because it looks a lot like it,” Sharon's face lit up before it sobered a little and Steve peered over to see that she had flipped the page to a sketch of Peggy. It was one of the few memories of Peggy he had, where she had not noticed him, watching her work tirelessly over the war room map, helping Colonel Phillips plan and plot the Commandos' movement into HYDRA territory while also avoiding the Nazi patrols.

This one was a side profile of her half-bent over the map, a fierce grim expression on her face, but nonetheless a testament to her strength of character and compassion to keep everyone relatively alive in the war.

“That's...beautiful,” there was something in Sharon's tone that Steve could not identify as she traced a light finger over the shaded sketch, “you still love her, don't you?”

“I...do,” he replied honestly after a moment. He liked Sharon and really did want to get to know her a little more outside of the cover of being his neighbor, but at the same time, he also knew that Peggy had a special place in his heart, “but-”

“Don't worry,” Sharon glanced at him and he saw the faint smile on her lips, “a girl can wait.”

A faint blush worked its way up his neck as he felt a bit of heat on his cheeks and ducked his head, “I'm sorry. I just...it's not right-”

“It's fine, Steve,” out of the corner of his eyes, he saw her shake her head, her smile growing a little wider, “she deserves it. When you're ready, ask me again, okay?”

“I, uh-”

“But that doesn't mean we still can't be friends for now,” Sharon gestured to the sketch, “it's still beautiful though. There are definitely archival photos and interviews of Agent Peggy Carter, but I think this captures her best when you look at it.”

“Thank you,” he replied sincerely as she flipped a few pages before pausing and opened the sketchpad fully. Her expression had turned from a sincere happiness to a bit of trepidation and Steve saw that it was one of his earliest sketches of Bucky, the small dated notation showing that he had sketched it while he had been recovering from his wounds after falling into the Potomac. “That's...”

“I know,” she replied, biting her lower lip, “...he...” She closed her eyes briefly before opening them again, “I know he's your friend, and I know that he probably means a lot to you, but...he...maybe it's because I've been an intelligence agent for my whole life, I...I can't see him for who he is right now. Maybe not now...maybe not for a long time.”

He stayed silent, watching as she composed herself, “Natasha told me that he was a ghost in the intelligence community, something to scare the new recruits with even though I thought she believed that he was real. He became more real to her when she got injured six years ago, but the Logistics Department didn't exactly believe it. I think my parents used to believe that he was real - snuck a look at their files when I was really young and it talked about some training facility in Russia that had been ignored by the Soviet Union and Russian government. Natasha told me that was where she came from, Red Room or something like that.”

She glanced up at him, “I see your friend and I see someone that's really dangerous. Every single one of my instincts tell me to fire first before I get killed by him because there's no second chance... I mean, in this day and age anyone can become a terrorist, walking on the streets or even just buying groceries next to you. Him, the Winter Soldier? He's a clear and present danger, one with a giant painted target on his back and on whomever he's targeting.”

Steve nodded once as she glanced back down at the sketch of Bucky and sighed, “I'm not going to shoot him on sight, but what he did to my friends and co-workers that day, I...I can't forgive him. Not now...maybe not ever, even if he was programmed to do all of that.” She looked up again, “Sorry...”

He waved her apology away, “You don't need to apologize. I probably do because I made that announcement and got a lot of good men and women killed-”

“No, it was a soldier's decision. For the good of the many we needed to be sacrificed. My anger is only for him and for Alexander Pierce for deceiving us, for doing this. The blame game isn't going to get us anywhere and certainly not what we need,” she attempted to smile again, but it was crooked and a little harsh. She quickly turned back to the sketchpad and continued to flip through, a blatant attempt to change the topic from Bucky or anything remotely like it. He let the matter drop seeing that there was no point in pursuing it and he did not want to alienate her after starting to know the real Sharon.

“That said...” she spoke after a few minutes of silent page turning, “I'm glad that he has someone who cares deeply for him to at least help him regain himself...”

Steve felt the smile creep up on his face at her statement as he took a long sip of his coffee, watching as she flipped page after page before she stopped again, a puzzled frown gracing her features. “What?” he asked.

“This...this face...” she turned the sketchpad towards him and Steve nodded, seeing it as one of his attempts to the face in Bucky's memories that he had forgotten to rip out and discard.

“Bucky says he keeps seeing a variation of that face or something like that, in his memories, though he's been trying to describe him to me so I can sketch it out for him. I sometimes helped the cops with witness sketches, though I kind of did it anonymously because of gangs, mafia, that sort of thing – didn't want retaliation and Bucky said I was an idiot sometimes for doing dangerous things like that,” Steve shrugged.

When Tony had told him of Bucky's request for a sketch, there was no reason behind it – not that Steve needed a reason to help his friend in any way he could - but Steve had figured perhaps his best friend had remembered something about police sketches and that sort of thing. Back then, Bucky had constantly nagged for him to stop doing it, if only because their neighborhood had some seedy ties to the underworld, but also because it was dangerous work if it was discovered that he was sketching for the police. No one liked a rat and rats usually were put down quite hard. He had stopped when the newspapers started picking up some of his political cartoon sketches, under a penname of course, and because he had caved to Bucky's demands for him to stop.

“I know this face...well, maybe? I think...” Sharon glanced at the crumpled paper she had picked from the wastebasket and glanced over to the wastebasket itself, “all of those the same face or a variation of it?”

“Yes?” he watched as she leaned over, grabbed the wastebasket before dumping the contents onto the table with a quick apology as she fished out his sketchpad from the pile of crumpled news-like print and handed it over to him. He held it high above his coffee mug and the table itself as he watched her meticulously take each paper and flatten them out, staring at one before either putting it to the side or crumpling it up again and throwing it out.

“Crap,” she plucked a ball that had ended up in her coffee mug and wrinkled her nose in disgust before glancing at it and throwing it out. She kept doing it for a few minutes until the table was sort of cleared again and Steve set his pad down again. He watched as she leafed through the pieces of paper she had flattened out as best as she could.

“Um...there were others, but I think they may be in recycling or whatever happens to the garbage at the Tower,” he pointed out, but she shook her head.

“Don't need it,” her frown was more pronounced and Steve was struck at how similar she looked like the drawing of Peggy pouring over the map in the war room. The moment was broken a second later at the jerk of her head before she picked out one of the crumpled newsprint and pointed at the jawline. “Do you mind doing a quick sketch for me?”

“Uh, sure...” Steve flipped to a new page, “the jawline?”

“Yeah,” she placed the rest of the slightly crumpled pieces of paper in front of him, “the eyes from this one, though make it a bit rounder with softer edging. Then probably take the nose and lips from these two, though I remember the lips being a bit thinner, at least I think they were. My memory's a bit fuzzy and hazy, but the gist is, I think I remember seeing someone with similar features in all of these sketches.”

“Uh huh,” he nodded absently as he quickly did a rough sketch of what she was asking for, adding the different facial parts and features she continued to rattle off to him before glancing up at her, “Hair?”

“See, that's what gets to me. I don't exactly remember,” she stared at the face he had sketched, but with no hair she was shaking her head. “Maybe...maybe my cousin can remember the hair. I do know he was with me that day because it was a gala of sorts for bigwigs and both of our parents wanted us to make sure we knew who was who in SHIELD... We both ended up with cake on each other after deciding a food-fight was the best way to get revenge on each other for some weird fight we were having.”

Steve had to laugh a little at the mental image of Sharon with cake all over her and caught the dirty look she shot at him in response. The look was broken with an eye-rolling grin before she gestured to his sketchpad. “May I?” she asked again and he handed it over, before the two of them got up and headed back into the Tower. Steve followed Sharon as she took the elevators down to Maria's office and knocked politely on her door.

“It's open,” her voice was muffled on the other side, even though it was not exactly open and JARVIS let them through after deactivating the security protocols.

“Agent 13, Captain Rogers, what can I do for the two of you?” Maria looked up from her stack of paperwork, most of whom had headers that said _Stark Industries._ Steve had known that Maria was the head of security for the Tower and other sorts of thing she oversaw, but it had never really hit him that she _was_ part of S.I. until he saw the small mountain of paperwork stacked on her desk.

“Sorry to bother you from paperwork, but is there any chance I can talk to Agent Coulson, er, more specifically Agent Triplett?” Sharon asked, eyeballing the paperwork with some distaste. “I was looking through Captain Rogers' sketches for Sergeant Barnes and identified features that made a composite face, but Agent Triplett would be able to further confirm.”

“Sure,” Maria did not look annoyed by the delay of her paperwork, but neither did she looked relieved and Steve figured she was one of those people who kind of enjoyed paperwork. He himself never liked it, especially if it was writing a letter of condolence on the front lines. But at the same time he understood it completely when it came to requisitioning or requesting ammunition or specialized items that could not be cobbled together from whatever resources the SSR had. He did remember Colonel Phillips complaining more than once about paperwork and signing off forms. He knew he was not supposed to hear it, but with his enhanced hearing, he could hear him complaining to his second-in-command as he had waited outside the command tent.

Maria stepped away from her desk and into an adjoining room where frame-like clear monitors were set up and tapped on one of the blank see-through screens as the whole room lit up. It looked a lot like the monitors both Tony and Bruce had been working on in the Helicarrier, though Steve still could not wrap his head around the technology and projection. On some level he understood that it was user-based, but _how_ it actually integrated a person as a base eluded him and he supposed would forever elude him. Technology was so far in advance that he knew he was at least lucky that he got how mobile phones worked now and the basic touchscreen.

There was a moment of static on the screen that was connected to London, before Agent Coulson's face popped up with his customary stoic look. He looked well, Steve noted, since the last time he had seen the Agent which was a little over a year ago before the whole HYDRA mess rained down upon them.

“Maria, got more news?” Coulson asked before nodding at them, “Agent 13, Captain Rogers.”

“No, but Agent 13 is requesting to talk to Agent Triplett if he is on base?”

“Hang on,” Coulson looked off screen for a moment, “hey Renee, can you get Triplett here? Thanks.” He turned back to look at them, “He should be here in a few minutes; went upside for lunch with FitzSimmons and Dr. Foster.” Coulson looked down for a second before rummaging for something, “I'm also sending the latest information we have on old requisition forms that we found in the archives here. I forgot to ask Captain-”

“Steve, Agent Coulson,” Steve interrupted, “I'm not exactly part of the military hierarchy anymore. Semi-retired, or probably at this point retired, if you will.”

“Still codenamed _Captain_ America,” Coulson smiled blandly, “anyway, I was going to ask if you knew of any area in this bunker that secret files were hidden away?”

“The layout is the same?” he asked and Coulson nodded. Steve furrowed his brow as he thought for a moment, his mind instantly mapping out the areas he hoped were not touched. He knew the SSR bunker well, but even there were a few places he had not been allowed into, mostly in Howard's research area. “Howard had a few backrooms, I'm not exactly too sure what the base is laid out like now, but it should have been behind the secondary elevators before the exit to the Underground.”

“That's where we found some of the files,” Coulson confirmed and Steve nodded.

“Yeah, nothing else really...sorry,” he apologized with a shrug, “I...wasn't exactly on the base that much except for mission briefs.”

“Someone say mission briefs? Those are music to my ears!” Steve had never met Agent Triplett, but had to smile at his entrance into the frame of the comm. all grins and wide smiles. “Agent Coulson-oh hey...holy-”

“Agent Triplett,” Steve greeted as he saw the telltale sign of giddiness overcome the dark-skinned agent's face, before he tried to mask it with a jerky nod. It was the same expression he had seen on Coulson's face when they had first met, but he was more or less used to it. Natasha had teased him saying that there had been an internal memo from Fury to all personnel not to gawk at him like a celebrity whenever he was at the Triskelion or working on missions with him. At least Rumlow and the rest of STRIKE Delta had the courtesy to _not_ gawk all the way up until they attacked him in the elevator.

“Antoine,” Sharon said dryly next to him and Steve saw Triplett's gaze turn to her before he relaxed and rolled his eyes.

“Hi _Sharon_ ,” he dragged out, “if you're here about that wire tap in Beirut, it wasn't me, it was him.” He pointed straight at Coulson who looked mildly offended.

“Wiretap in Beirut?” one of Sharon's eyebrows rose, “interesting...”

“Forget I said anything,” Triplett grinned, “so, what's the hubbub?”

“Do you remember this guy?” Sharon held up the sketchpad towards the screen as both agents sobered up from their momentary familial teasing. “Was at the gala that we got cake on each other.”

“I remember that,” Triplett said absently as he leaned closer to the screen as he stared, a frown on his face.

“Nothing on facial recognition that’s a definitive match yet,” Coulson said as Steve also saw another small screen taking the face that Sharon was holding up and running matches through the various agencies' databases as well as some he was not familiar with.

“I don't remember how his hair was, do you?” Sharon asked.

“Short? Slightly cropped with slight balding at the crown? He was definitely wearing a military uniform, though the cut was Germanic, I think? Also...probably had a monocle. Add some shadowing to his jawline I think...five o'clock...” Triplett had closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again and Steve took the pad from Sharon's hand and pulled a pencil from the back of his pocket to do a rough sketch of what Triplett was saying.

“Scars, I remember a scar...near his right eye going down. It was pretty thin, now that I think about it, knife made, or stiletto. Something really thin and deep. Kind of hugged his jawline and ended at his chin. Maybe it was a message...maybe not?”

Steve heard the door open to the anteroom in Maria's office, but did not really acknowledge whomever had come through, deep into his sketch as he used his sling arm as a temporary stand to hold his sketchpad still. It ached at the pressure and angle he was keeping it at, but he would leave it up to his healing abilities to sort it out later.

“Stark, Dr. Banner, Mr. Wilson,” he heard Coulson greet.

“JARVIS told us something was up, so we decided to wake up and smell the coffee, wait, that's coffee right?” he heard Stark behind him and out of the corner of his eye, saw Sharon move her mug away from Stark's hands as he reached out for it.

He ignored whatever else was going on as he added the details that Triplett had given to Sharon's sketch. After a few minutes, he flipped the sketchpad towards Triplett again. “This him?”

“Yeah! That's the guy-”

Everyone stared at the sudden pinging on the database at the same time there was also an echoing pinging sound on Coulson's end. The database had found someone matching what Steve had drawn.

“...Who the hell is Baron von Strucker?” Tony asked into the stunned silence.

Sam reached over towards the monitor displaying the name and dragged out the text line before sending it into an exploded view, “A businessman with ties to Roxxon Oil and apparently the Baron of some small hamlet near the border of Austria and Germany. He's noted to have donated a lot of funds to SHIELD and was one of the people who submitted Alexander Pierce's name for a Nobel Peace Prize bid. There's other stuff here, but it's not exactly great reading...”

“Probably funded HYDRA through Pierce,” Tony muttered next to Steve as he stepped forward to peer at Strucker's file with Sam, “where's he now so we can flush this bastard out?”

“London...” Coulson spoke up and they looked at him to see him and Triplett frowning, looking off screen, “he's not exactly hiding and is actually here for a business conference...”

“I'll coordinate with May for a surveillance team-”

“Do that, but I don't want anything getting back to us, not even a hint. If he's playing it out in the open like this, he has friends in high places. It's enough that we have Thor here to make sure HYDRA doesn't do anything funny, but we don't need any more black-eyes from MI5 or any of the other MI divisions,” Coulson nodded at Triplett's suggestion before turning to them, “is this the guy?”

“I...don't know,” Steve shook his head at Coulson's oblique question regarding Bucky, “I...” He glanced at Bruce who shook his head.

“Sergeant Barnes is still being sedated. We'll know in a few days, Agent Coulson,” Bruce said and Coulson nodded.

“I understand. We'll keep an eye on Strucker. His visa doesn't expire until the end of the week. Maria, if you can flag his business ventures-”

“Will do,” Steve had almost forgotten that Maria was standing behind all of them, quiet and out of the way as was her custom, but always observing and ready to help in a moment's notice.

“We'll keep in touch then,” Coulson reached out and disconnected the link and Steve turned to Sharon who had a pensive expression on her face.

“How-”

“He was a guest at that party and I thought he was one of those politicians that always got invited to those types of parties when Antoine and I were young. If we knew...back then...”

“Nothing you could have done save for a time machine,” Sam stepped forward, “at least we now have a potential lead.”

“Yeah...” she still looked pensive and Steve reached out and caught her on the shoulder.

“Sharon, thank you,” he said and she nodded, some of the stress easing from her expression as she left the room. He watched her for a moment as the others took their leave before Bruce came up to him.

“Steve, do you have a moment? I...uh, started to look at the files we got from D.C. You're going to want to see this,” Bruce looked a little uncomfortable, but Steve nodded and gestured with his sketchpad for him to lead the way. It was a start and he hoped it would at least give them some answers.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

A gentle reminder that I don't write ships or pairings, I write friendships and epic bromances (and sisterly love for whatever the heck the sister-equivalent is for bromance). That said, I may inch characters towards ships, but I won't necessarily write romance – it's just not my cup of tea and I much prefer drama and action over a romantic story.

My head!canon has it that Steve sketches whenever he's stressed out. And I read somewhere that Agent Carter's second love (and eventual husband) is Gabe Jones who is Triplett's grandfather, making him and Sharon related somehow (in this story, she's second cousins with him).

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to EnsignWhispy for clearing up a bit of confusion regarding ECT - much appreciated.

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 10_

 

They arrived in the lab in short order and Steve frowned as he saw that Bucky was also in Bruce's lab, albeit still sedated.

“I moved him once I found some of the files detailing what had been done to his mind. Unfortunately I can't get a proper scan of his mind unless he's in the lab. Don't worry, I'll move him back up once I'm done,” Bruce apologized as he stepped around the medical bed Bucky was on.

Steve stood by his friend's bedside, noting that his right arm was wrapped up in heavy tight gauze, especially on his shoulder. “You set his shoulder and arm?” he asked even though he already knew the answer.

“Reset it,” Bruce was bringing up the files, “that way he shouldn't be in much pain anymore when we take him off of sedation. There are a few bones that already set themselves that I don't want to re-break or reset since it would damage his nerves even further, but his accelerated healing is compensating for that.”

“Thanks,” Steve could not help but stare at Bucky, his fingers twitching a little to not hold his friend's hand as he lied on the bed. They still didn't really know how much of the modified super soldier serum Bucky had been given in comparison with him; but Steve knew from experience that whenever he had been sedated, it did not exactly do its job, keeping him just a bit under, but also keeping himself highly aware of his surroundings and if people touched him. He did not want to accidentally wake Bucky, especially since they still did not know if he would viciously attack in a fugue state or watch them with a wariness of a cornered prey.

“I emailed a few colleagues of mine who are in the psychology field a few days ago with Bucky's brain scans – don't worry, I didn't tell them whom the scans were of – and got some replies back just now,” Bruce gestured for him to come to his corner of the lab and opened up a holographic projection of Bucky's brain with a few added notes that was not in Bruce's hand writing.

“It's not ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, as I had originally thought and the data we got from D.C. all but seconds it,” Bruce explained, “besides, it seems my initial hypothesis was way off base. One of my colleagues was saying that modern-day ECT, though still trying to shake off it's terrible reputation from decades ago, is much better now at helping people. Anyway, they did point to the dark spots and also the incisions made in the lobes that I pointed out a few days ago as points of concern.”

Steve nodded absently as he crossed his arms across his chest, “You think the dark spots may be created by whatever was in the chair? Tesseract and or Chitauri sceptre?”

“That's the current hypothesis,” Bruce said, “but the video files I've managed to go through don't show anything like it. The just show the different types of...uh...conditioning...procedures – Steve it's not pretty what they were doing to Barnes. Unfortunately these files were only sporadic and timestamped all over the place. It makes me think that there were other places.”

“Like the Red Room?” Steve asked as he absently touched part of the projection and brought up a slew of pictures. It was an effort to force himself not to react in anger or throw  _ something _ at the images that clearly showed Bucky being tortured in the god-awful chair they had seen in the bank vault. Part of him wished he had completely trashed it on his way out when HYDRA attacked, but the other part of him knew that it was too late to go back and do anything.

“I've asked JARVIS to tag the chair and everything in the vault after I saw this stuff to make sure that the CIA or any government agency doesn't start using this for their own programs,” Bruce's voice was tight and Steve nodded grimly.

Perhaps there had been a time three years previous, in his own mind, when he had been fighting against HYDRA for the good of the war effort that he would have thought the government was right in what it was doing, but now, after all that had happened, that naivety was long gone. Surprisingly it was Alexander Pierce he had to thank for that – and maybe Fury's political game and schemes – but mostly Pierce for breaking that illusion that not all government agencies or governments were that benevolent for the good of the people. He glanced over to Bucky's unmoving form and could almost wistfully hear his best friend making a crack about how cynical he had gotten.

“I wish Romanov or Barton was here. They could make heads or tails about whether or not we found a Red Room hideout,” Bruce continued, “but I'm guessing it could be a Red Room. There are definitely others since there's a whole section of mission reports with a few dates that don't match up to some of the video and notes.” He flicked over an icon of a folder that was labeled with (24).

He glanced over to Bucky, feeling oddly like a voyeur even though he knew what the number meant. It was more than likely the number of missions the Winter Soldier had been credited with as completed. Whether or not it was an official number over seventy years, it still felt personal to Steve. The fact that his friend had twenty-four  _ official _ kills to his name... It was not that he disliked death or killing; he knew that his own strength, even just the lightest of taps, could instantly snap someone's neck, and knew of the necessity of it in war and combat. It was that these were sanctioned kills, these were not in combat situations, but  _ assassinations _ . These were deaths that could have been easily avoided and Bucky had been manipulated and programmed upon horrific pain to himself, to finish them.

A very, very small part of him thought that perhaps it was a saving grace that Bucky did not exactly remember killing those twenty-four targets and whomever else was collateral damage. But he shook his head once to clear that thought out – it was not conducive to helping his friend regain his memories – even if he would potentially regain the memories of the targets that he had killed. Steve himself remembered each face he had killed, each mission the Commandos had undertaken, each time Captain America was in the field. The super soldier serum gave him a memory recall that was vivid and nightmarish at times when he could not sleep, especially the missions where his men and he had to do a few things that made them lose sleep in the end.

“Strucker's not in any of these images,” he moved the file of (24) to the side to read later, or perhaps not really to read at all judging by how queasy his stomach was churning as he stared at the images. There was at least one or two images showing how Bucky had already lost his arm, clearly bleeding out on the operating table as a measuring tape of all things was next to it. He surmised that this was when they were trying to experiment on the regeneration factor his best friend had before giving up, outfitting him with his metal arm and working on his brain instead. He really wanted to strangle the scientists he could see in the photos, but judging by all of their lined faces and grey hair, they were more than likely dead in seventy years.

“Which makes me think that it may not be the guy Barnes is looking for,” Banner shrugged but pointed out a figure in the farthest corner of one of the images. The face was blurry, but Steve could make out a few distinctive features like a heavily bushy, greying beard and bright keen eyes that looked oddly familiar. He could not recall where he had seen such keen eyes, but pushed it to the back of his mind. “This guy shows up in some of the pictures – here-” Bruce swiped his fingers across the screen several times, the images now overlaid with yellow circles showing the same person.

“That's not a coincidence,” Steve murmured even though both of them knew the exact same thing. He frowned as he swiped between two images, one where it was a grainy black-and-white from probably the early years of Bucky's imprisonment to what looked like more modern times, even though some of the equipment looked a bit dated. “He...doesn't look like he's aged at all,” he looked back and forth between the two, “JARVIS, can you identify this person?”

“No sir,” JARVIS replied, “Doctor Banner has asked me to search the databases since he discovered what you have found, but there is no match. I have tried enhancing the image, but there is no match.”

“I mean, it's nearly impossible to disappear in this day and age, but you can do it,” Bruce rubbed his chin, “I managed to, until I kind of got attached to staying in one place since there wasn't any problems with the Other Guy. Even had a dog at one point. Maybe this guy is really dead?”

“Somehow, I doubt that,” Steve stared at the two images before an idea occurred to him, “maybe Strucker's the one taking some of these images or recordings if they're from recordings?”

“Maybe,” Bruce conceded, “that didn't occur to me until now, but it makes sense if he's not in these images. Though I still don't know.” JARVIS helpfully displayed the file the various spy agencies in the world had compiled on Baron von Strucker. “Says here, huh...no purported birth date, just an estimated birth date...”

“JARVIS do these two faces match up to Strucker? Could he have changed it with plastic surgery or some alterations? Or even one of those mask things that Natasha used to impersonate Councilwoman Hawley?” Steve asked.

“Standby sir,” the A.I. said before a few seconds passed, “no sir. There is no match for either. As for Agent Romanov's technology, I believe that was created only very recently.”

Steve cursed silently as he sighed and flicked the images away. There was no way to know until Bucky woke up and from what Bruce had said, it would not be for the next few days.

He glanced over to Bruce as the shorter man clapped him on the shoulder, “There is some good news to all of this.” He watched as the doctor brought up the what was clearly the latest brain scans done on Bucky and saw that there was a noticeable difference in the dark spots.

“They're lighter,” he absently poked one of the spots, “that's good, right?”

“I think so,” Bruce said, “it means whatever's going on is definitely waning since he's been here. I'm guessing that actively fighting the programming in him is helping him both regain his memories, and also combat the programming at the same time, trying to mentally confuse it.  _ I think. _ These are the spots in the area associated with memories, but we don't really know if its the memory fading or the programming. I think it could be either or, considering the fact that he stopped trying to kill you – but then again, he did pass out from the pain, so it's a very good 'I think'.”

Steve wisely did not note that Bruce sometimes sounded like Tony, especially when he was unsure or did not have a positive hypothesis he was excited about. Instead, he jerked his head towards the image, “So the dark spots will eventually fade to normal?”

“That's the rub,” Bruce collapsed the brain scan to show the whole of Bucky's brain, “there's no change in his frontal lobes and some of the darker spots deeper in the temporal lobe. Which means he's probably getting memories back, but something is still trying to force him to complete his programming. Or vice versa.”

“You think it's the Tesseract or Chitauri sceptre technology?”

“More than likely yeah,” Bruce said, “I never really scanned what it does to a person's mind and by the time the whole thing with Loki and New York was over, we didn't really think about it. I'm sure SHIELD did a complete workup on Clint and Dr. Selvig, but those files weren't in the dump that was on the internet.”

“Fury probably didn't put those files on SHIELD servers...”

“Or someone in HYDRA might have taken them and wiped them off the servers,” Bruce pointed out and Steve nodded.

“I remember that Dr. Foster did some research into it a few years ago?” he asked and Bruce nodded.

“Yeah, the sceptre was housed at Green Bank before Thanos sent the Chitauri there. I can ask Maria to ask Jane about what she was looking at, though I think it may have been related more to her Einstein-Rosen bridge theories and wormhole travels than anything else.”

“Couldn't hurt to ask,” Steve shrugged. They could use all of the information and resources at the moment, especially in light of the fact that alien technology could have been behind Bucky's brainwashing and programming. “Also, maybe ask Thor to ask Loki about the sceptre?”

Bruce winced, “Doubtful...I mean, you know as well as I do how he operates. If it's an advantage to him, he'll do it...or if it's got some serious consequences against Thor, he'll do it even though he'll just say it's for his own benefit instead of Thor's. Plus, he did leave the sceptre here two years ago as a 'gift' of sorts instead of taking it with him after Fenrir used it...”

Steve frowned as he thought over various excuses he could conceivably convince Loki to help them. At the same time, he also was wary of Loki's help, even though he knew the Asgardian held a very faint grudging respect for him. It was not noticeable at first glance, but Steve had noticed that Loki sometimes outright ignored him – as opposed to some of the more visceral reactions he had to Tony, Fury, Barton, and even Thor at times. Steve knew that Loki cared deeply for Thor, even though everything he did at first glance seem to benefit only himself. He recognized the self-sacrifice performed time and time again for his brother, and had wanted to tell Thor to really open his eyes to what his brother had done for him over hundreds of years, but at the same time knew it was not his place to step in-between the two of them. Maybe there had been something in Loki that Steve recognized as bits of himself and perhaps bits of Bucky that made him treat Loki like an ally after he had been on the run from Thanos with Thor in tow three years previous.

He really did not know, only that he still believed Loki deserved some kind of punishment for what he did to the innocents in the Helicarrier and in New York City – but not from Thanos; not from the being who held his very being, his soul with a geas, physically and mentally torturing him and forcing him to give up the Infinity Gauntlet and Tesseract. At least Thanos was not a problem anymore...or at least not for a while. Steve was not under any illusions that Thanos would escape, perhaps not in his lifetime, but more in Loki's and the whole geas contract would play itself out again. It at least gave time for Loki to figure out a way to break the geas he made with Thanos without dying; and he had no doubts that the Asgardian was feverishly doing the same at the moment.

That said, the only one Loki seemed to genuinely get along with – if his snippy remarks and off-hand comments was considered getting along - was Bruce. Steve had long figured it was because Bruce, or rather the Hulk, was the only one who had really earned Loki's respect by handily defeating him three years previous in New York. There was also the same respect to Natasha that Steve had definitely noticed, though it was hidden underneath the wordplay he would try to goad her into and she would respond with aplomb.

“Yeah,” Steve conceded to Bruce's point. This was his and Bucky's problem, not Thor's and certainly not Loki's. “Can't hurt though...”

“At least give us some more facts even though it's probably magick related gibberish that we'll probably be getting back along with an underlying lecture about how idiotic we all are,” Bruce smiled faintly and Steve felt the corners of his lips quirk up at the sour humor.

“JARVIS, in the info dump, was there any traces of where Loki's sceptre went?” he asked, briefly staring up at the ceiling as a habit before glancing at Bruce, “doesn't hurt to find out where it's been and maybe see if we could reverse something in it?”

“Yeah, but we have to be careful. Remember the last few times?”

Steve grimaced, remembering the fight he and Tony had in the bank vault of all places. A part of him wanted to apologize to Tony for what he had said, but another part of him held the grudging fact that there should have been some oversight into where his technology was going  _ before _ he had even become Iron Man. Also the last time they had even been near the sceptre was on the Helicarrier and that had been precarious at best.

“There is a notation in a file signed off by Director Fury saying it was taken to the Slingshot, Captain,” JARVIS replied after a few minutes.

“Meaning, it's anywhere now, crap,” Bruce grimaced as he collapsed the open image of Bucky's brain, “HYDRA probably has it and that thing while having the same composition, material, and radiation signature as the Tesseract, is way too small for me to do a broad spectrum search for it. I'll just pick up everything at that rate.” He winced, “Sorry...”

“No worries doc,” Steve replied easily, understanding that their initial search for the Tesseract while it had narrowed the search down considerably, Bruce had confessed that if Loki had not decided to stick the Tesseract high in the New York City skyline instead of burying it deep underground, the search would have taken days if not weeks.

“I'll keep searching through the files we got, seeing if there's something I can do to help your friend, but if this is really a hybrid alien tech we're dealing with...” Bruce did not finish the thought and shook his head before handing him the thumb drive with the files on it, “Here. You should look at this. I made copies onto my own lab servers – Tony made sure my stuff was completely off-grid and housed on another server so that no one knows I'm here – but this is yours.”

Steve took the thumb drive, but paused, fingers on the small rectangular object as Bruce held onto the other end. He met the steady unmoving gaze of his friend, “Steve, it's really not pretty. The stuff I showed you just now? That's just the tip of the iceberg. If you...if you want to go a few rounds with the Other Guy afterwards...” Bruce chuckled bitterly, “I don't blame you if you want to after this...”

Steve nodded solemnly as Bruce let the thumb drive go and he stuffed it into one of his pockets. “I'll call Thor-”

“No, let me do it. Maybe I can at least tell Thor to leverage something from Loki about the sceptre he left behind,” the other man shook his head, “you...need rest.” He patted his fracture arm gently and Steve knew that he understood he was giving him some privacy to look over the files.

He nodded again before moving to the door, “Doc, Bruce, thanks. And don't forget, you're as human as all of us...okay? Get some sleep too...” It was not the best of comforting words he could say, considering that he had a feeling Bruce had seen the files and had the haunted look on his face, but it was the best he could do considering the circumstances. He glanced over to where Bucky was unconscious, his breath steady even though it was induced by sedation, and silently sent a prayer up to God to help him through this before leaving the lab.

* * *

It was two days later that Steve found himself in Tony's workshop, staring intently at the shield strap he was working on. “Hold it there,” he murmured out of the corner of his mouth as he adjusted the eyelet and tapped down on it firmly with the small hammer he was holding. Lifting his hammer up, his saw Dummy move its camera inquisitively at him, daring not to chirp with its clamps as it was still holding the strap and part of his shield in place. He blew quickly on what he had done and examined the finish eyelet hole he had just put into place.

“Okay you can let go,” he said and the robotic arm released its clamp, chirping and whirring in place, pleased with what it had done. There was the soft squeak of wheels on his other side and Steve nodded absently to You who had been holding the other strap down so that he could mirror what he had done to that side. “You too, You,” he addressed the other arm and it gently set his shield down as he worked the buckles made of a kevlar-weave material on the straps of his shield and slipped it onto his left arm.

He tested it by moving his arm up and down, the once-fractured bones already healed in two days time. When Bucky had ripped the shield from his arm during the battle outside the bank vault, it had broken the straps as well and Steve knew he had to replace them. Tony had suggested the fabric weave for him, telling him that it was stronger than what he had previously used and so far, Steve liked the feel of it on his arm. It was tight, but strong enough to withstand some jerky movements before he had started to attach it to his shield. Normally he had let Howard fix his shield whenever the straps broke in combat, and even SHIELD technicians when he had started working for SHIELD, but he had asked Howard long ago how to make his straps from ground up. It was mainly for field maintenance whenever the Commandos could not return easily to base, but Steve was glad for the crash course in sewing and repairs.

Tony had offered to repair his shield, but Steve had deferred, waiting for today to repair his shield. There was no significance in the day's date, but it was because Bruce had told him a few hours ago that he was going to bring Bucky out of sedation and Steve wanted to be near him, but not near enough that he was going to trigger headaches for his best friend.

“Captain, Butterfingers wishes to present to you more water,” JARVIS' voice sounded exasperated and dry and Steve turned to see the last of Tony's robotic arms somewhat helpfully lifting a cup of crystal clear water. Just a half-hour ago, he had been presented with the same 'gift' by the robotic arm, except it was kind of murky-looking water. JARVIS had immediately told the arm to clean the sink that it had accidentally dumped a pot of dirt and hapless plant into before trying to give him more water.

“Thanks,” he took the glass and saw the arm chirp happily before noting beyond the arm, the sink was still running. “Um, Butterfingers, the sink is still running...”

The arm tilted its claw-head to look at him, puzzled, before swinging to look at the sink and trundling over to it. Steve shook his head before setting the offered glass down onto the workstation he was using to repair the straps of his shield. He did not exactly understand _why_ Tony's robotic arms had taken a shine to him, crowding around him like overactive eager puppies of a sort, but at the same time, he admitted that they were pretty helpful – when not making a mess of Tony's workshop through their own programming eccentricities.

JARVIS had been helping him 'wrangle' them so to speak, but Steve could hear the exasperation in the A.I.'s voice; a very human-like exasperation that made him wonder more than once what kind of programming Tony had done to him. He knew Tony would have tried to keep the arms from crowding him after a while, but Tony was currently occupied down in the corporate sections of the Avengers Tower. He was following the corporate trail that Coulson had sent them a couple of days ago and in the midst of several conference calls with Pepper and Maria. Pepper had been due to fly from Malibu, California a day ago, but in light of the information sent over, had stayed to ensure accountability and since most of Stark Industries' paper files were located in storage facilities over there.

Steve knew that Tony missed Pepper a lot and was not inclined to bother him with the nuisance of his robots' behaviors when he could spend more time with Pepper on the phone or even just talking with her. He had done the same with Peggy whenever he could before the whole SHIELD-HYDRA fiasco. Since then, he had only managed to visit her at least once a month and even then dared not stay too long in case HYDRA got any ideas. He was not naïve to think that they did not know where Peggy was being housed, but at least in the past year, there had been no overt moves to harm her or hold her hostage to draw him out. He supposed that was one consolation that no one, not even HYDRA, wanted to touch a ninety-six-year-old woman without incurring the wrath of anyone and everyone. There was also the fact that Peggy still did not know that SHIELD had collapsed and HYDRA had been there from its inception. When he visited, he talked more about the Avengers than his missions with SHIELD to prevent himself from lying. She was still sharp at times, and he knew he was a terrible liar.

It was something echoed by Sam more than once when they had spent the past year looking for Bucky. As far as excuses went whenever they thought to have happened upon a clue or needed information, Sam had taken over to spinning a story to the locals or authorities they came across while he had stayed quiet and out of the way. Sam had spent the last two days in the VA center in the Bronx finalizing his transfer from Washington D.C.'s branch. After this morning's run, his friend had tried to make an excuse to test his wings and Steve had waved him off, knowing that his friend itched to be in the air after the ground battle at the bank.

Sharon had also reported to the CIA New York headquarters a few blocks away near Tudor Place and Steve briefly wondered if there were any consequences for her to leave her posting in Washington D.C. He supposed that she was probably giving them a briefing on what had happened and hoped that she was allowed to return to at least let them know why HYDRA had arrived at the bank instead of the CIA. There had been a brief thought that the CIA had been infiltrated by the remnants of HYDRA like SHIELD had, but Steve did not want to dwell on that negative thought. All of the agencies across the world were more vigilant about who they recruited, who was within them after SHIELD had imploded.

Steve assumed that Thor had left for Asgard, but there had been no word from Coulson regarding their resident alien since then.

“JARVIS, is Bucky awake?” he asked as he flexed his arm within the straps and swung it horizontally back and forth, feeling the straps dig into his forearm as it met some air resistance, but the straps held.

“In the midst of regaining consciousness, Captain,” JARVIS replied.

“Good, I'll head down to the gym in case he wants to wander into the workshop,” he hopped off the bench, gathering the tools to one side of the workstation before heading over to the door and exiting. He waved an absently goodbye to the arms who chirped at him, including Butterfingers spraying drops of water everywhere.

“I will let sir know of the water,” JARVIS said resignedly as the doors to the elevator opened and Steve stepped in.

He arrived shortly at the floor where the Tower's gym, including a section literally built into the outside of the building for rock climbing or in Clint's case, a sniper's nest, and stepped in, finding it empty. The tower personnel that worked for Stark Industries had a different gym on another level, one more geared towards the fitness culture of the United States these days. This gym was specifically built with the Avengers in mind, with weights far beyond what a normal person would be able to lift, targets, and weaponry practice that also doubled as a training simulation at times. The walls were also built to withstand the paces he put his shield through and that was what Steve was counting on.

“JARVIS, run the road course,” he asked and watched as a virtual grid of sorts dimmed the gym into a training room and a generic city street, a blend of New York, London, and the wider areas of cities like Houston, were incorporated.

“The record is five minutes, thirty-four seconds, and fifty-six milliseconds, Captain,” JARVIS said after the course flashed once to signal that it was ready.

“Got it,” Steve replied before crouching and readying himself. He breathed out steadily before flinging his shield, hitting the first painted target. The race was on.

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Notes/Additional Notes:**  
>  Quick summary of the two previous stories this chapter references in the _Trickster Universe – Atonement and Coterie_ :  
> \- Loki was not punished by Odin, but was watched at all times by Thor, Sif, and The Warriors Three after his return to Asgard following The Avengers – this was because Odin knew that Thanos would come after Loki for his failure in securing the Tesseract. (He wanted to protect Loki, but didn't exactly express that sentiment really well – Odin has a hard time explaining things...)  
> \- There's a very ancient history between Odin and Thanos, stretching back to Bor's reign and it is revealed that Odin has two other brothers, Loki (whom he named his adopted son after), and Baldr. Loki Borson killed Baldr Borson after events and being manipulated by Thanos to kill Baldr and in turn was killed by Odin who then assumed the throne after being second-in-line.  
> \- The current Loki (Odinson) had made a geas contract with Thanos to obtain what he needed in turn for the Tesseract – geas contracts are part of blood magick and are very volatile to use – Thanos used it to control Loki in his subsequent attack on Asgard for the Infinity Gauntlet, but in the end Loki managed to outwit him and with the Avengers, Asgardians, and Jotuns, imprisoned Thanos in the Tesseract itself.  
> \- One year passed since Thanos' imprisonment until the Avengers stumbled upon a rogue HYDRA cell operated by one of Loki's coterie, Jormungandr. The history behind the coterie was one that ultimately started to turn Loki from a very optimistic young prince to what he was in Thor and The Avengers. Essentially, the coterie were shunned for their unnatural magical abilities (magick usage is not forbidden in Asgard, but it's not exactly openly displayed either) and the coterie, out of a sense of twisted righteousness tried to assassinate the House of Odin (Thor, Odin, and Frigga) to install Loki as their new king. Loki disagreed with this approach and killed a majority of his coterie before asking Odin to spare Fenrir, Hel, and Jormungandr's lives and for them to be imprisoned instead.  
> \- The coterie operating one year after Thanos' imprisonment, were under Thanos' orders (through Lady Death herself – Thanos' lover) in a convoluted plot to get himself out of prison by killing Thor and using Thor as a bargaining chip against Odin to free himself. Fenrir eventually disregarded those orders and decided to kill - Loki out of a jealously, grief, and rage for spurning him long ago (they were lovers).  
> \- In all of this, Thor waffled back and forth between trusting his brother and not-quite-trusting him (and eventually maybe realizing how much Loki had sacrificed for him because on some very, very deep corner, Loki cared for him like all siblings do).


	11. Chapter 11

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 11_

 

He had been sedated again, the familiar feeling coursing through him as he instinctively assessed his surroundings with closed eyes. The bed itself was firm, soft blankets covering him along with the coarse feeling of linen pants and sleeveless shirt. He could feel the twist and slight dimpling of newly healed skin on his torso and elsewhere; a clear indication that he had been injured, but the injuries had just healed. The feeling of cold was absent and he knew he was more than likely back at the Avengers Tower, judging by the soft smell of clean cotton sheets and muffled sound of blaring traffic. He could feel the warmth of the sun on his face and knew there was a window near his bed, the brightness of the sun behind his eyelids telling him that it was perhaps mid to late afternoon.

He remembered-

His eyes snapped open at the absence of the familiar aching, dulled pain that had constantly settled behind his eyes. An unnamed, unfamiliar yet so familiar panic clawed at him as he tore away the sheets, lurching up, ignoring the dizziness from the lack of food-

“Whoa, whoa, settle down there for a second,” the voice that spoke up followed by an unnaturally strong grip on his arm made him growl, ready to lash out and snap the neck of this interloper that dared to interfere-

Only to stop as he met the steady, unmoving gaze of dark brown eyes flecked with green-

_ He was met half way, taking the full-bodied tackle to the stomach as he folded and let their momentum carry them tumbling down the stairs to the bank. The target had exposed himself just so- Or not, he noted as a gigantic roar filled the air and the man who had cowered behind him earlier burst out, all muscled, green, and furious. He did not know what kind of creature it was, but he could see the angry brown-eyes flecked with green as his vision was obscured by pavement and the target's attempt to pin him to the ground. _

This man, this same green-furious-muscled man - not muscled now - that held him was not his target, but was far from innocent either and at the same time, was someone he knew instinctively not to anger or get close to. This man was to be taken out from far away or not even at all.

“There you go,” the man said in a soothing tone, almost too calm for his liking and it pricked at something uncomfortable within him. It was not fear, he knew that as much, but rather it was caution. He felt the firm grip on his flesh-and-blood arm loosen before the man held up his hands in front of him, palms facing him, as if he was submitting to him, showing that he was unarmed. “See? Just letting you go-”

“The...” he wet his lips, feeling his throat suddenly dry as he put the puzzle of  _ what _ this man, this non-target creature was, to the side, “...target- Rogers-”

Something in the man's eyes lit up and he nodded before giving him a faint smile, “He's alive...” His fingers waved in the air before a projection lit up the space in between them showing a spy camera feed of the target.

He grunted softly at the sudden bloom of pain in between his eyes and gritted his teeth at the video feed of the target- Rogers, throwing his shield at targets in what was clearly a training room of sorts. He had not killed him-

_ “You're fighting it, please, fight it...you're stronger than-” _

He had fought, he had tried to fail the test, but the test had overwhelmed him, had tried to take control- No! He had  _ fought _ , he had  _ believed _ . He had warned the targ- warned Rogers to  _ not _ go into combat – that he  _ would _ , should,  _ had _ , targeted him because he could keep his stupid punk-ass idiotic self out of a fight-

_ “I had him on the ropes- _ ,”  _ Steve brushed the blood from his lips as he shook his head and rolled his eyes. _

_“-on the ropes,” he finished nearly at the same time and looped an arm around his shoulders, “Sure you did.” He could never stay away from a fight, even in the theatres as he leaned down and picked up the enlistment form that had fallen out of Steve's pockets during the fight, he inwardly shook his head. [4F] The jackass who had been wailing on his best friend had it coming if Steve was willing to come to blows with him over what had to have been something against the troops overseas._

Rogers had fought anyway, his silvery red-white-blue shield flashing this way and that, taking out HYDRA soldiers that had ambushed them. He had fought without a care in the world, a  _ trust _ to not put a bullet in his head and it had  _ hurt _ . Oh, how much it had hurt, to resist, to  _ not _ fail, to fail, to stop the agony that had screamed at him to finish the job, finish his mission. That he  _ was _ his mission and he needed to complete it-

He had shouted at the heavens why, why must he complete it, why, why, why and it had screamed back, squeezing him like a vice that choked and clawed at him, that he must finish the mission that he could not fail, that if he failed- It drove him mad, drove him to attack Rogers, because he could, and because he needed validation, that he could not resist- that his fight-that he had fought- That the pleading of pain, to stop it, to somehow not have that much pain, that much hurt coursing through him, burning him-

_ “I will keep killing...you...until you...” _

It had been no use – death was not an option.

It had been a test and  _ he _ had succeeded, but he had failed.

His eyes had been blue, and they had  _ promised _ .

_ “And I'll keep protecting you, even if you can't.” _

'Till the end of the line.

He had protected the target from himself, from the pain, from the programming, from the  _ command _ . And that...that was-

“Good,” he whispered as he opened eyes he did not know he had closed and stared at his hands blankly. His eyes absently traced the curved, callouses of his flesh-and-blood one before looking at the metal one with the faint sensation of touch. The momentary absence of pain that had defined his moments since walking into the Avengers Tower puzzled him, but it was something he did not currently dwell on and pushed it aside as he focused more on the more immediate sensation of his flesh-and-blood arm – that the stiffness and occasional twinges of pain were completely absent. He was a weapon and thus knew every ache and pain that had been inflicted upon him by others or by himself in escaping traps, ambushes, and those willing to retaliate against him. He knew the sensation of chilled ice, of cold lethargy, the painful hypersensitive burn of ice-cold blankness that was immediate coming out of cryostasis, of sedation – cotton-like – and of things that enabled him to do his job, to carry out his commands.

“I, uh...reset your shoulder, well, after Steve kind of dislocated it again trying to stop you,” the man sitting next to his bed looked a little sheepish, “um, also took the opportunity to reset some of your other bones in your shoulder and arm so you shouldn't have much nerve impingement anymore.”

He flexed his fingers, noting the minute difference of reactionary time in them, the lack of stiffness that had plagued him since he had dragged the target-dragged Rogers out of the Potomac. A very small part of him wanted to scream and shout that he needed to be incapacitated, that having stiffness was good because then he could not kill the target- But ruthlessly quashed it down – since when did he need to be incapacitated to feel guilty for killing a target?

He squeezed his eyes shut, pushing away the insistence to go and deal with Rogers at this moment, because he had been almost completely healed and he would not get another chance- That the training room Rogers was running through was perfect, would never see him coming-  _ No! _ He would not- He would fail the test and  _ pass it _ . He would succeed in the test and  _ fail it _ .

He opened his eyes, noting his breath was a little ragged, but the man that was sitting next to him did not say even a word. He expected judgmental eyes-

_ Those eyes always evaluated him, not kind or unkind either, but calculating and seeing him as the Soldier he was. _ _ He never wore a lab coat, the only faint memory that was not quite tangible, but not intangible either. He and the other man. One in a business suit, cut differently, one in military uniform that he could not place, monocle ever present. They, the others, wore lab coats and he dismissed them from his mind. _

-but instead saw a steady gaze that belied pain, yet was not condescending in any sort of sentiment of shared experience or nonsense like that. No, the eyes that met his gaze were a simple one that brook no judgment or of understanding. They were just simple and watched him, waiting.

He knew that this man's voice was steady, sometimes too unnaturally steady, and with eyes and seemingly unafraid of being near him. That housed the green monster that tore through the bank and into the HYDRA soldiers... This was someone who made no judgments upon others because he had been judged too many times  _ by _ others – more than likely to have been found lacking. And somehow, he understood him like he understood the man named Tony Stark. This man was not his enemy, but neither was his ally. This man was also not a tool to be used nor to be discarded. This man was just that.

“Steve finished your sketch,” the man said and he stared at him, his interest piqued. He knew that Rogers had been sketching since Stark had relayed his request, noting the scraps of paper littering the various wastebaskets around the Tower. Rogers had shown him the various sketches, faces that looked almost like the one that haunted his dreams and waking hours. The face he  _ knew _ would help regain his fractured mind, regain a sense of who he truly was – not the Soldier, not this “Bucky” that Rogers called him and at the same time so hauntingly familiar that he  _ wanted _ to respond and be true.

“I'll show it to you in a second,” the man shook his head and patted to the familiar sketchbook that was wedged in between the back of the chair and his back. “But first,” the man drew out a small manila envelope that clearly contained something bulky. Judging by the various rectangles he could see it was set on the small end table next to his bed, some of it was money, most likely American dollars by the shape and size of the rectangles.

“This is for you,” the man said, pushing the envelope towards him a bit and he stared at it for a long moment. It did not look harmful, but he was suspicious as to why he was being handed an envelope that contained money and other objects in it.

“Is this a test?” he asked, his voice cracking on the words and he dry swallowed, trying to get some moisture into his parched throat. Sedation always came with the cotton-mouthed feeling and he knew that there was the long-buried memory of stuffing cotton balls into his own mouth, next to the memories of a younger, youthful Rogers. There was a glass of water on the end table, but he dared not reach for it. If it was a test, then perhaps there was something in the water and he did not want to suddenly end up cold-pain, memory gone-lost-

He forced himself to focus, flicking his gaze back up to the mild-mannered man who looked a little disconcerted before answering with a hesitant nod.

“Yes...and no...?” the man seemed unsure by his own answer and seemed to war with something inside him before nodding a little more decisively, “I...saw the videos of you, of what they did to you in that vault and can probably also guess that they also did things to you elsewhere. I mean, I want to say no, it's not a test, but yeah...it's a test if you want to look at it that way...? Maybe? I'm...not really good at this...but I don't want Steve to do this and Tony certainly not. Maria's more liable to treat you like an asset, which you aren't, so yeah...err...now I'm rambling.”

He took the proffered envelope and tore it open, dumping the contents out onto his lap where they pooled amongst the blankets he had been given. One tiny square metal object in a small plastic bag. He instantly recognized it as what Stark had been working for his arm before they went to D.C. He set the object aside, Stark having told him where it was to be put and could easily have done it himself once it had been finished.

The envelope also contained one passport, labeled with the name [Gilberto de Pietro] filled with a few stamps of other countries, he had visited, namely South American ones. Bits of Latin American Spanish and Portuguese flitted across his mind as he rolled the name around his head, accenting it in the right places, and could almost imagine introducing himself as such a name. But it felt foreign, almost a floating-dreamlike quality, much like the other names he had used in his missions. The codename he had been given, Winter Soldier, felt a little more solid in his head. The rank and name Stark, SHIELD Agent Maria Hill, and the others had been calling him, “Sergeant Barnes” went deeper, felt more solid; but none of them felt as solid, or as painful as when he heard the target-heard Rogers call him “Bucky” or even “James Buchanan Barnes.”

“ _ Gilberto de Pietro _ ,” he tested the name out loud before putting the passport down to the side, and picked up several neatly folded sheets of paper. Opening them up, he could see that they were official-looking medical forms for the metal arm, stamped with Stark Industries' logo everywhere, noted with composition, medical reason, and the signature of some doctor he suspected did not exist. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something in the other man's look sharpen and realized that the signature at the bottom was signed by this man.

“Dr. Rick Jones,” he looked over to see the man shrug.

“Not my real name, I'm Bruce Banner, but I can't exactly use it to sign off on technical specs and medical stuff,” the man made an abortive movement as if to lean over and shake his hand, but decided against it at the last minute. “Kind of like you...hiding from people who want me dead, want me alive, want me for...well...not pleasant things.”

The name Bruce Banner had been a vague notation in his memories and in the mission files, mostly associated with a General Ross, but he could see the guarded look the other man wore. Banner was not afraid of him, but rather that fear was directed at something else, something that worried him far more than what had happened in Washington D.C., the past week, or for a very long time. He saw Banner shift in his seat, gesturing to the papers he held.

“It was Maria's idea, really, hiding you in plain sight. Those will get you past TSA and if they do give you problems, Stark Industries has the best lawyers so you really shouldn't have any problems. In ways, you're like me, hiding from HYDRA or other agencies that want you dead or worst, want to use you-”

He curled his metal hand into a fist, feeling the brief wash of anger before forcing himself to push it away. No one would take his memories away and use him.

“-so Maria's been hypothesizing that you're probably going to want to leave as soon as you get the name and face that you wanted Steve to sketch. I don't blame you, I kind of want to go after those bastards too after what I've seen done to you. I know that Tony said that you might be willing to play ball with us, let us be the spear tip in your mission against these guys who did this to you, but I think we all know that you would probably want to seek vengeance by yourself,” Banner cleared his throat a little. “If this is really the guy that you're going to hunt, we won't stop you.”

He narrowed his eyes, staring at Banner, “There is a catch.”

Banner nodded, “We want to help you.”

He could see the truth in the words, the sincerity, but shook his head. This was the test, this was to see if he would fail or if he would pass. Like the many  _ games _ played where they would shock him, put him in the cold-darkness, water-

It was a test and he was-

-he was...failing?

No.

It was a test and he was-

-he had...passed?

No.

He stared at Banner. If it was a test...but it was not a test...then...

“We want this son of a bitch as much as you,” Banner continued, “because of SHIELD, because of HYDRA, because this guy ruined the life of two people, one of whom we don't really know yet, but we feel like we're starting to know, one of whom who supports him tirelessly and will never give up.”

“...till the end of the line...” the words fell from his lips before he could stop them, knowing exactly whom Banner was talking about.

Banner had a faint sad smile on his face, “You know he'll follow you if you do leave, right? It may take a few days and I'm sure you'll probably leave him false trails, but he'll follow you.”

_ And follow him he did. It was only after he had read some of the records in Steve's file – happening upon them from a very lovely young blonde-haired secretary with the name of Lorraine, who worked under Colonel Phillips – that he realized the night he was due to ship out was when Steve had successfully enlisted. Steve had literally followed him to the HYDRA facility – a few months late – but had followed him nonetheless. Too stubborn, too tough, too damn foolish to realize that it was war and good boys were dying left and right. _

_And he was grateful as hell because there was no one else he could ask to watch his back as he watched little Steve Rogers' to ensure that maybe they both could get out of this war alive._

“...Stubborn punk,” he muttered, letting the memory wash over him, even though he winced at the lancing pain that stabbed across his temple and to the back of his head. He saw the faint, sad smile pull a little wider on Banner's face at his comments.

“Listen,” Banner leaned forward a little, “I'm not really a good person to sound off on, or even be talked at – heck ask Tony, I slept through some of his monologues, but the fact that in all this time, even when you had been programmed to kill Steve, you've hesitated. Do you know what that tells me?”

He only arched an eyebrow at Banner, his face expressionless, but feeling the curl of something hungry, something that  _ wanted _ , a validation that he did not know had existed. This was what the tests were for, right?

“That you...James,” there was a moment where he thought Banner had hesitated on the name, but it passed too quickly for him to make anything of it, “that there a strength in you, fighting, unwilling to bend to any rules, any commands, anything that isn't your own will. It's a testament to the strength of your character that you have been able to resist and even fight back.”

They were comforting words, they were words he knew that had to be said, but somehow, he felt a little empty from them. It was not... It was not the validation he had been seeking. But neither did it leave him with a completely empty feeling. He only blinked as Banner sat back, disappointment in his eyes, but pushed the emotion aside as he reached behind him and pulled out the sketchbook.

“We, the Avengers, want to help you, if you'll let us,” Banner said before opening the sketchbook-

_ “Again...” _

_His breath was harsh, a gasping wheezing sound before every single one of his muscles seized and a strangled scream emerged from his lips. He tried to shake his head, tried to plead for it to stop, for the buzzing whining sound to stop. It hurt so much-_

_“Stop.”_

_And suddenly he could breathe again, the black spots fading, slowly fading, as he turned his head to stare at the impassioned face that stared back. He wore a monocle, something that had always stuck with him, a part of him thinking it would have been an amusing thing to tell to-_

_-tell-_

_Who was he going to tell? He...he did not know...just...the pain-_

_“Again...”_

_“No...” he breathed, tried to speak, “p-please-” His words hitched upon the rubber guard on his mouth as he choked and tried to swallow his spit- Choking on it- arcs of agony lashing at him-_

“Hey! Hey!”

He lashed out, the whine of his functional arm slamming into something, breaking cracking- He pushed at the sheets that tangled up on his feet – he needed to get away – could not breathe-

“ _ James! James! _ ”

He froze at the name, something in him reaching out, grasping onto it and holding on for dear life as he drifted, flailed, drowned.

“ _ James! _ ”

He snapped open eyes he had not known he had closed and looked up from where he had crouched on the ground. It was also then that he realized on the peripheral of his vision the utter destruction he had laid waste to half of the mattress, ripped out, with fluff and foam everywhere, the broken end table with a shattered lamp, mug of water broken and dripping into off-white carpeting and Banner, half-reaching out with a hand to him, but not so close to touch him. He had fugued again...

He grunted a little as he pushed himself up with his good hand from the ground and avoided looking at the mess. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Banner sigh and reach over and around him, picking up the scattered contents of what had been in the envelope and setting it in front of him, in a slight soggy mess.

“I...guess that's confirmation of the face?” Banner commented mostly to himself as sat back against his chair and moved to close the sketchbook.

“Wait,” he cleared his throat, stopping Banner mid-movement, “let me...let me see...”

Banner stared at him for a long moment before handing over the sketchbook with  _ that man's _ face at the forefront. Shunting aside the queasiness, the blinding memory of pain, of pleading, begging- He stared at the sketch of the man's face, tracing the familiar curves and angles, the facial hair that he knew had changed each time he had seen him, but the agelessness of lined youthfulness, the monocle...

“...His name is Baron Wolfgang von Strucker,” Banner started quietly, “and he's currently in London, probably for the next few days before he returns to Austria. Agent Coulson is coordinating efforts with the SHIELD base there if you want to contact him. Maria wants us to make sure we have good intel before we hit him and take him in. The governments of the world are still a little leery that the Avengers were part of SHIELD and now only independent working for Stark Industries so we have to do some more intelligence gathering before we make our move.”

Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. Baron von Strucker.

He had a name to go with the face and something curled in him like satisfaction as he lifted the other pages to close the sketchbook. He realized he had under-grabbed the pages and moved to completely close the sketchbook when his gaze fell upon the sketch in front of him.

_ “Self-portraits are kind of vain, you know?” Steve had only stared at him as he used the last of the sunlight to put finishing touches on his latest sketch. The hot summer days of August were finally nearing the end and the rumble of distant thunder would bring some relief to the stifling heat that had plagued the city for two weeks now. _

_He clambered out of the fire escape window and joined him on the metal stairs, feeling the press of solid metal digging into the sore points on his body. It had been a long day at the factories._

_“Most artists do them right?” he countered, “so, self portrait just for vanity's sake? For me?”_

_Steve laughed, the hitching wheeze of his breath telling him that his best friend had an attack today, but was not as serious if he was willing to laugh. That was also one of the reasons why he was glad the summer heat was on its way out. Less chance of having a heat-stroke induced asthma attack on his frail body. “Who would remember a skinny little kid from Brooklyn?”_

_“Besides me? No one, but tell you what, sketch me a self-portrait and I'll put it in one of the secretaries' desks at the factory. Hide it in the order forms and whatnot,” he joked and Steve laughed again._

_“Only if you get me her name,” and he nodded._

_“Promise, I swear.”_

He had gotten Steve one of the secretaries' name, had not received the sketch, but never went on the promised double-date. Because he had gotten his orders and assignment the next day, to the 107 th . The sketch and self-portrait in his hands was the face that he remembered, skinny, angular, narrow, but still bright eyes of someone who wanted to fight bullies and did not want innocents to be hurt.

“This is for you,” a thumb drive appeared in his vision and he looked up to see Banner staring at him with an unreadable gaze, “it's all we got on Strucker as well as all of the files of what happened to you. It's all there if you want to look at it. There's a portable tablet in the desk over there...um...” He trailed off before standing up, “Listen...it's up to you. We won't stop you if you decide to leave since you've gotten your sketch and the name...” The other man looked like he was about to say more before shoving his hands into his pockets and walked out, leaving him alone.

He barely heard the door close as he stared at the self-portrait of Steve Rogers,  _ not _ Captain America Steve Rogers, but  _ Steve Rogers _ .

_ “I had them on the ropes,” the tiny, squeaky voice spoke up behind him as the others ran away. It sounded like it was trying to be surly, but utterly failing to even sound threatening. _

_He snorted as he turned and offered his hand to the skinny little boy with the buck-teeth and bleeding nose. Skinny Steve Rogers was what everyone called him – and the nickname probably rang true, but he ignored the 'Skinny' part. “Sure. James Buchanan Barnes. Everyone calls me Bucky.”_

_“I know who you are,” Rogers said grouchily, taking his hand, but looked surly and defensively at him. “Everyone knows who you are.”_

_“Damn straight,” he grinned, showing his own gaping teeth. He had just lost one yesterday and the Tooth Fairy had given him ten cents even. He was going to buy ice cream later on with it and eat until he was completely stuffed- “Hey, let's get some ice cream. Got money from the Tooth Fairy last night.”_

_The skinny blue-eyed boy stared at him, agog, “What?”_

_“Ice. Cream,” he repeated as if Rogers was stupid before grinning again, “Or maybe just use it to kind of stop your face from turning purple-” He grinned as Rogers frowned, fists balled, ready to strike him, “Just kidding, geez, stop taking everything so seriously.”_

_“Why,” Rogers asked, lowering his hands as he absently wiped his bloodied nose on a sleeve._

_He shrugged, “I hate bullies.”_

He looked over to the projected video image of Rogers still running the obstacle course, apparently testing out the durability of his shield. Rogers was still alive. He had failed to kill the target, had failed in his mission. Twisting the thumb drive in his metallic fingers, he could feel the faint imprint and shape of the small rectangular object as he got up and walked over to the desk, stepping carefully over the debris that littered the room. He found the tablet that Banner had been talking about and plugged the drive in.

He hated bullies, he was sure of that. And if the man who haunted his waking dreams and foggy memories was the cause of that, then he was a bully.

And he wanted to find out how  _ he _ had been made into a bully, how  _ he _ had utterly failed his test of protecting  _ Steve Rogers _ .

* * *

“Sir,” JARVIS' voice was quiet and insistent, but Steve nonetheless jerked his head up at the noise, realizing that he had all but dozed off in front of reading more notes taken from the files in bank and watching another horrific video of the behavioral conditioning and experimentation done on Bucky.

“Y-Yeah JARVIS?” he blinked, his eyes feeling like sandpaper and glanced blearily at the clock to see that it was 5:42 in the morning and sunlight was already starting to dawn through the cracks of his curtains. He realized he had all but stayed up all night again to watch and read more footage of what had been done to his best friend. Sleep had been a slight issue since he had started to watch, his dreams twisted and confused; sometimes he felt like he was watching them torture Bucky, other times he was the one who was being subjected to the chair, waterboarding, begging for it to stop. Then there were the times when he thought he had found the place, rescued Bucky only for him to turn on him, stabbing him with a knife, yelling about how he should have been there for him, to not abandon him. He also had nightmares about Bucky falling from the train, his screams echoing and blending in with screams and pleading in  _ that chair _ that usually made him wake up with a start.

“You asked me to notify you if Sergeant Barnes left the premises,” JARVIS said politely, “he left just a few seconds ago, headed around the corner into Grand Central Station.”

“Did he take the envelope?” adrenaline shot through him as he rubbed his eyes roughly and closed the tablet, stumbling over the chair he had been sitting on, grabbing his wallet, credit cards, and keys.

“Yes sir,” JARVIS replied as Steve sorted them into his pockets and grabbed his comfortable leather jacket.

“What's the next flight out of here to London?”

“JFK Delta Flight- Captain Rogers, Sir has asked me to counter your offer with a private jet of his own-”

“Tell Tony thanks but no thanks, I'm going after him alone-” he yanked open the door to come face to face with Tony and Sam, both whom had stony looks on their faces.

“Like hell you're doing this alone, Steve,” Sam glared at him, “Remember? We're doing this together. I did not go globe hopping with you all last year just for you to do this alone when we both  _ know _ where the hell Bucky's going.”

“And if not the private jet, I'm thinking quinjet so we can meet him on the tarmac when he gets there,” Tony's voice was chipped and his eyes glittered with anger, “Cap-”

“No one's going anywhere, not at the moment,” Maria's voice came from down the hallway and the three of them turned to see her walking towards them, Sharon trailing in her wake with a nervous look about her.

“Maria? Sharon?” Steve frowned before Maria produced an innocent-looking envelope from the folds of her business jacket.

“JARVIS, is Bruce coming down here?”

“Here,” Bruce's voice came from where the elevators were as all of them turned to see him dressed in slightly rumpled clothes, a little sleep logged, “JARVIS said that he left-”

“Yeah, but that's not the main problem,” Maria confirmed and handed the envelope over to Bruce who took it with a frown. “Agent 13?”

“I...I had orders to give this to you when I checked into the New York headquarters,” Sharon looked pale, “I'm sorry Dr. Banner. Really... But...it's a subpoena for you to appear at an emergency field hearing in downtown New York City later this morning. I...I tried to tell them that you weren't a threat, that the Hulk isn't a threat-”

Bruce's very bitter laugh made her fall silent and Steve saw that he had opened the envelope and unfolded the pieces of paper inside. “Signed by General Thaddeus Ross...wonderful.”

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

I'm amused at the unassuming way Bruce always takes over parts of my story. It's not sneaky like the various SHIELD agents POVs like Maria, Romanov, or even Coulson, nor is it barge-in-make-noise style like Stark, but very subtle. He's done it in the first two stories of my series and now is doing it again in this one. Well played Bruce Banner, well played.

 


	12. Chapter 12

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 12_

 

“There was only so much you could have done Tony,” Bruce said his head swiveling back and forth as Tony paced of the general length of penthouse area. Steve also watched Tony pace as he sat in one of the couches. He caught Bruce's look of resignation as he leaned against the bar, a deterrent against Tony trying to grab a few drinks for himself at the latest news. “They would have found me sooner or later after HYDRA took down SHIELD, you know...”

“Don't care,” Tony's voice sounded like he was singing the words, but everyone heard the edge in it, “I'll get my lawyers to help fight this one-”

“Tony-”

“-Though they can probably navigate military tribunals or congressional subpoenas much easier than-”

“Tony-”

“-me, but don't worry, I'll handle this, you're an employee of Stark Industries-”

“ _ Tony! _ ” Bruce voice finally broke through his rambling and shut him up as he turned to stare at him from his pacing.

“ _ What _ ?” Tony's eyes had narrowed, annoyed with the interruption, “I'm trying to-”

“-yeah, save me from being carted off by Ross to god-knows where and probably locked up to be experimented on, but  _ I'll be fine _ .”

Tony stopped pacing and shook his head, “Fine? Really? Emergency field hearing and you're  _ fine _ ?! That's bullshit and we all know that. No, Bruce, this is not  _ fine _ , and you're not facing this alone.”

“What  _ Mr. Stark _ is saying,” Maria quickly and smoothly cut in from where she perched on top of another couch that Sharon was sitting in across from Steve with a glare to Tony, “is that General Ross more than likely took a shot in the dark that you're here and happened to score. In the past few years since SHIELD had tailed you, Bruce, we've managed to fend off his requests as well as ones he made internationally for your extradition from the countries you were in. Fury wrote a secret roster for the Avengers Initiative with members that we wanted to recruit, but were not able to, members like you. He sent it to General Ross  _ after _ Tony here talked to him about making sure the Abomination stayed where he was under lock and key.”

“How come I didn't see this list? I thought I was your consultant-”

“Handing you all of the potential personal profiles wasn't on your contract, Stark,” Maria shot him a dry look, “not until the Chitauri invaded anyways.”

“And how about the others-”

“We can't protect them anymore,” Maria's dry tone became a little sharper and more brittle and Tony managed to look a little chagrined. She cleared her throat and looked at Bruce once more, “What I'm saying is that I'll be going with you to the field hearing. Bit of experience dealing with Congress recently and also ensuring that you are Stark Industries personnel, a highly valued and  _ visible _ member of the Avengers and so forth. They are not going to lead you out of the hearing in chains, Doctor.”

“Exactly which is why JARVIS, call the lawyers in town-”

“No lawyers, Tony,” Hill shook her head, “you send in your army of lawyers and the people at the hearing will get defensive. They will think you have something to hide and that's not the image I want to present to them.”

“But-”

“I'm not the best lawyer, but I've had recent experience with Congressional panels and their questions. They want the truth, or at least a version of it and while I'm sure General Ross will be on the panel and may stack it in his favor, there's always one or two members in there who are the dissenting opinion or have not formed one at all. These are the ones who try to ask the different questions-”

“Didn't seem to go that way when I got my subpoena and Stern was an asshole,” Tony groused under his breath and Hill shook her head again, a crooked smile on her lips.

“You're your own lawyer, Stark,” she said and Steve had to agree with the sentiment. After Senator Stern had been arrested for being a member of HYDRA, the news outlets had shown multiple showings of Tony's congressional hearing with the Senator where he had all but shown up the ex-Senator and ex-weapons developer Justin Hammer. It was pretty impressive bravado that Steve had expected when someone angered Tony.

“As I was saying,” Hill continued, “the questions will be pointed and direct, but it'll be up to the two of us to spin this for the media's benefit. It's the media and public you're going to convince. Not General Ross, not anyone else on the panel. If some of them are convinced, then that's fine, but currently public opinion of the Avengers is pretty high and some General trying to take out one of the members is not going to play well.”

“Oh, I can do press release-”

“No Stark,” Hill shook her head, “not to the American media. Overseas, yes, but not here.”

Steve immediately realized what Maria's angle was in all of this. At the same time he also realized she had learned  _ a lot  _ being Director Fury's second-in-command and sneakiness did not even begin to cover what she was capable of. He understood what she was saying and hated the implications in her plan, but at the same time also knew that he needed to give Bucky some distance, especially after what he had seen from the archival footage.

“What...?” Tony looked a little confused before Steve spoke up quietly.

“Baron von Strucker,” he said and the confusion melted from Tony's face. “We need to get Strucker before Bucky takes him out.”

Maria nodded once confirming his words, “Coulson's got a tentative plan forming. The business conference ends with an extravagant gala of sorts, not exactly invite only, but a good place for deals to be sealed and alliances formed.”

“Maybe I shouldn't have given Barnes the passport and money?” Tony scratched the back of his head.

“It didn't matter. Either way, Sergeant Barnes would have figured it out sooner or later when Steve finished the sketch,” Hill looked nonplussed, “but if Tony Stark were to attend the gala-”

“-saying how great Dr. Bruce Banner's contributions to society are during the red carpet walk – there's a red carpet right?”

“Red carpet,” Maria confirmed dryly.

“-and maybe drop hints that Strucker is the asshole behind the camera and some HYDRA brainwashing that we don't really know about-”

“The public will be more focused on Strucker than on Dr. Banner and either way, won't care about the General's attempt lynch Doc Banner here,” Sam finished for her, perched on the spine of the couch Steve was sitting on. He whistled, “Geez Agent Hill, that's...pretty sharp. And scary. Mostly sharp, but still scary.”

“And what if Sergeant Barnes assassinates the Baron?” Sharon asked, her voice hard and Steve winced at the harshness of her tone. He knew that she did not like Bucky, did not like the Winter Soldier, but at the same time tried to force himself not to react defensively to her biting tone.

“It will at least give some media exposure to Bucky that he's a victim of HYDRA's machinations,” Steve replied quietly, staring at mostly nothing, but noting out of the corner of his eyes that everyone had turned to stare at him.

“Steve, you can't believe-”

“Playing all the angles, right?” he grimaced as he stared at Maria who nodded solemnly before looking at the others, “USO days...” He left it at that as he fell silent, hating what he had just said, and mostly himself for saying it. But he also knew that it had to be said.

It was after Peggy had asked if he only had two options to be a lab rat or a performing monkey that he began to see the different angles in the war. Senator Brandt's offering of him becoming a chorus girl, so to speak, was one angle, one where there was money being raised for the troops by selling war bonds, yes, but that money was still rationed heavily and troops out on the front lines barely saw some of the finer equipment developed and had to make do with what they had or scrounge for field equipment. He thought he had understood what it meant to be a symbol, to be  _ Captain America _ , but after rescuing the 107 th , Bucky, and others from the HYDRA facility and forming the Commandos, he had really understood what it meant – playing yet another angle. Granted, it was not as sinister or morally grey as the angles SHIELD played, more morale inspiring and the like, it was still an angle, a grey area that he had learned very well during the war and after he had woken up from the ice.

“But Bucky isn't a victim, he's a survivor,” he finished more softly, “like all of us.” While the media mostly left them alone while they inhabited the Tower, Steve knew that he was always filmed whenever he went out in public, even for his jogs. In the day and age of smartphone technology and blurry lines of what it meant to be in the media, or even a journalist, the actions of a famous person would sooner make headlines before the action was even completed. He had never done a search for himself on any of the social media sites, and really did not want to, but he had no doubts that his morning jog, or even some of the Avengers' fights were on youtube or Vine, or whatever the young crowd these days took in their news.

Bucky coming to the Tower had been a calculated risk and Steve knew that sooner or later, even without HYDRA coming after him, his best friend's face was going to end up plastered on some website, especially with his distinctive arm. Perhaps that was why HYDRA had created the arm to be bright, silver, and have a red star – to show to anyone and everyone who survived his attacks that he was the most visible  _ ghost _ of an assassin. The news chopper hovering over their brief fight on the causeway of D.C. a little over a year ago must have shown some inkling of the Winter Soldier, of his distinctive silvery arm.

Steve was not naïve to know that  _ when _ , not if, but when the Winter Soldier was revealed to the public, there would be governments, countries, everyone that he had killed in that folder of (24) confirmed kills – and not counting collateral damage – demanding his head. Judging by what he knew of the media, and a little bit of how Brock Rumlow had paused in executing him, Natasha, and Sam in broad daylight a little over a year ago on the causeway; putting Strucker in the spotlight and showing that Bucky had been manipulated to take lives, maybe, maybe it would garner a bit of sympathy in the public eye. Bucky's war hero status as a Commando would help, and public opinion on the Avengers was high. If the American public was persuaded to help a war vet, maybe it could tie up some of the legal extradition laws if the other countries went after Bucky. It would certainly continue to expose HYDRA for the murderous organization it was-

He grimaced and shook his head. He was being selfish, wanting to make sure Bucky was not put in prison or even arrested for his crimes – and noted the irony of his thoughts running parallel to the lack of punishment Loki had received after what he had done in New York and New Mexico.

But this was  _ Bucky _ . This was his best friend.

“So then why not go to Austria if we know now that Strucker is the guy?” Tony was asking as he focused back on the discussion.

“We don't know that,” Sam spoke up from where he sat, shaking his head, “we only know that Barnes here has waking dreams about him. Who or what Strucker is to HYDRA and to him is still an unknown quantity. The fact that he had an adverse reaction to his face does show that there is something hostile involved, but we don't know much aside from what files we were able to dig up about Strucker. Maybe he was a middle man and had given Barnes to Pierce way back when, maybe it was a negotiation thing with Pierce after we were supposed to be dead. We know he's a businessman, and we know there's a few offices in Austria, but we don't have the intel we need to go there.”

“What kind of business?” Tony glanced over to Maria who folded her arms across her chest.

“Not weapons tech,” she shook her head, “found some of the older takeover forms you had drafted up to absorb whatever Extremis tech and AIM tech. Used to have sub-contracts with AIM, which is why he's at the conference. When you took out Killian, his company nearly went under. I'm guessing they're still recovering.”

Tony shrugged, “Fair enough.”

“Something to do with biomechanics,” Maria continued, “I'll forward the details to you before you arrive in London.”

“I take it quinjet is probably a no then,” Tony looked thoughtful, “well, at least Pepper'll be happy that the private jet is getting some mileage.”

“Steve,” Maria turned to him, “unfortunately at this stage of planning for the op, your presence there is going to provoke Strucker, especially with Tony there already, so you're going to have to play support-”

“Actually,” Steve interrupted, “I was thinking of going to the field hearing with Bruce.” He had realized that even if he wanted Bucky to not be imprisoned for all that he had done as the Winter Soldier, he could not be hypocritical and not extend the same courtesy to his teammates, especially since Bruce had not even asked for anything in return since Bucky's arrival. Natasha's hearing with Congress had been effective, given her reputation, but he knew that Bruce' hearing was going to be a little more tricky. The emergency field hearing was in New York and the last time Bruce had been in New York, he had in his own words, 'broke Harlem.' Ross was more than likely thinking of how public opinion, especially in the most populous city in the United States was going to go against Bruce.

Captain America's presence would counter that.

“Uh, Steve-”

“I'm your commanding officer, son,” he gave Bruce the full-force of his stern look for a few seconds and saw the other man blink in surprise before sheepishly nodding.

“Wow, remind me never to get you pissed, Cap,” Tony grinned from where he was and Steve rolled his eyes at the remark.

“He does that, you know,” Sam looked liked he was trying to hide a smile behind his crossed arms, but utterly failed at it, “don't argue with Cap. He'll win any argument, Doc. Oh, and I'll probably head over with you Tony, if that's fine. At least I be your backup in case Strucker gets spooked and runs for it during the op. Got a few more vacation days I can use up from the VA.”

“I'll coordinate logistics from here while you are at the hearing if you don't mind, Agent Hill?” Sharon spoke up before shrugging, “CIA didn't like me going off-site and reappearing in New York. I'm kind of stuck in the city until someone decides whether I get an official transfer or not.”

“Sorry,” Steve dropped the look he had given Bruce and frowned,

but Sharon shook her head.

“You don't get to say 'sorry'. I  _ chose _ to help,” she chided him gently, “besides, now they know I work with the Avengers. Don't worry your secret of snoring into a plush teddy bear is safe with me Mr. Stark, CIA will never know that.”

“Hey, that bear is a keepsake...” Tony sounded offended, but grinned at her joke, “all right, JARVIS, set up all of the usual bells and whistles about going to London for this business conference. Let Pepper know it's about Strucker so she can spin it in our favor when we land and...let's see, about 6am, traffic's going to be hell...whatever, gonna fly to the airport in the suit. Falcon, let's put those wings of yours to the test-”

“Clothing-”

“Don't worry, I've got a flat in London, Paddington area, really nice, and I'll have JARVIS order a few items for you. Just grab your passport, phone...” Tony stood up and started to walk away with Sam reluctantly following behind him as he made plans to head out to London. The others took it as their cue to disperse and Steve saw Bruce walk over from where he had been leaning against the bar. Sharon and Maria headed towards the elevator, no doubt for Maria to explain what Sharon would be doing while she helped on the logistical side.

“Thanks, Steve,” Bruce said, his voice quiet, almost shy and Steve smiled.

“Like I said, I'm your commanding officer and I certainly won't let some hell-bent General take apart my team,” he shrugged before adding even more quietly, “and it's the least I could do for all that you've done for Bucky.”

“No, you don't get to make me feel guilty or anything,” Bruce laughed lightly, “and no, Bucky does not become part of the equation. I would have helped him in any way I can no questions asked. He'll come back, Steve. Even though he's gone after Strucker, he'll come back, after all of this is over. I talked with him and he's definitely remembering bits and pieces. He's fighting the programming and he wants to know why they did what they did to him.”

Steve nodded; the unspoken 'I know' hung in the air as he squared his shoulders and took a deep breath and let it out. “I'll follow him, but right now, we've got a record to set straight.”

“I feel like I should have joined the army or something, 'oo-rah,' something like that,” Bruce said as the two of them headed towards the elevators and downstairs to Maria's floor.

Steve's laugh was long, loud, and contained a lot of needed relief in it.

* * *

He could see the TSA officer looking him with something akin to dubiousness in his gaze, but ignored it as he took back the planet ticket, passport, and medical forms he had handed over. The officer's gaze had lingered on his covered metal arm, the only hints that it was metal shown in fingerless gloves he had found in the room he was in at Stark Tower. He also knew that he was wearing a long-sleeved hoodie when it was a bit humid from the warm air blowing in from the constantly opening and closing doors of the Arrival section of the airport. Almost everyone else in the security line was wearing a form of short sleeves, though most still wore long pants.

“Lane two and three are open,” the officer said, “please keep your medical form out for a pat down and let the officer know that you don't want to remove your outer clothing due to scarring. Next!”

He moved past the TSA agent and headed to the open line, giving the officer standing in between two scatterback machines his passport, medical forms, and ticket. The officer glanced at the forms before waving over another officer before gesturing for him to stand to the side.

“Do you have any bags or carry-ons that are yours?” the officer than approached had a friendly face, but he could tell instantly that this man was very well trained at his job. It was an effort on his part to shake his head a negative and not react to the danger the man exuded. A few of the other TSA officers also exuded the same presence, and he did not blame them. The heightened sense of security that had risen in wake of the fall of SHIELD meant that many in the government more than likely underwent additional training.

His skill set allowed him to blend in easily with crowds whenever he finished with a kill, concealing his highly visible silver arm and so he fell back on it, forcing himself to adopt a nonchalant look.

“You look a little tired, Mr. de Pietro,” the officer said as he pointed to his arms to hold them out to a 'T'.

“Early morning,” he replied quietly, “coffee is in order.”

“Understood,” the officer smiled congenially, “I would like to ask you to take your jacket off-”

“Scar tissue,” he replied shortly and the officer nodded once.

“I understand,” he had a kind voice, but sharp eyes as he started to pat him down, “prototype for Stark Industries?”

“Tony Stark said it was a new line for veterans,” the pat down felt intimately invasive, and he tried to suppress the urge to snap the man's neck, but it was hard. He had seen some of the footage of what had been done to him; had watched it like an impartial third party while he had thought he could still feel the phantom pain, the whine of machinery and metal, screams that made him dry swallow so many times- Needles, the cut of a knife-

“Might want to tell your doctor or write a letter to Stark himself that if he wants to make more, don't do it with metal. Gonna have a hell of a time with wounded vets already getting through TSA. Maybe some plastic polymer?” the officer suggested and just when he thought he could not stand the pat-down anymore, the officer stepped away and wiped his gloves on a cotton-like pad. “You can put your arms down. Give me a second to run this through the scanner.”

With that the officer left him, and he let out a shaky breath underneath his mild-looking facade. He could still feel eyes on him and looked around, seemingly taking in the vastness of the international terminal for Delta that was beyond the security checkpoint. It was somewhat quiet, many travelers still in the process of waking up or adjusting their sleep schedules. The high pitched giggles of children echoed once or twice only to be shushed immediately by tired or concerned parents.

“You're all set Mr. de Pietro, have a safe flight and thank you for your service,” he turned as he heard the officer approaching him again and handed him passport, ticket, and forms. He pocked them immediately, feeling a little odd at those last words before heading away from the security checkpoint and into the terminal proper.

His flight was in roughly an hour boarding began in half an hour. A quick glance at the terminal map pointed him in the direction of a sit-down restaurant and he immediately took a seat at the bar, the most tactical spot in an open floor seating plan. It was near the television, near several long-necked bottles which he could use in lieu of not having any sort of weaponry on him that was bladed or blunted. It also served as a temporary hiding spot should anyone come with guns blazing and most of all, provided a rear-entrance exit into the bowels of JFK.

“What can I get you?” the cheerful voice of the waitress behind the closed bar with the nameplate of [Jen], made him glance down at the sparse morning menu and and pointed wordlessly at one of the choices that at least said eggs in it.

“Good choice, it's one of our more popular ones with international travelers,” the waitress smiled a little, “want anything to drink?”

“Coffee,” he said before tacking on the belated, “please.”

“Sure thing,” she replied before leaving to fill his order.

He had eaten just hours ago, a plate of two sandwiches left by his door by probably Rogers, but was feeling hungry again and knew that the sandwiches had burned through him quickly. His food options since he had stayed at the Tower were varied and he had only eaten when his body had pushed at him for the need to eat. Stark had given him free run of the kitchenette in the common area, but he had not been inclined to make or do anything, not exactly sure how most of the fancy gleaming machinery worked. To that end, though, he had taken to drinking the brewed coffee, careful to not completely empty the pot. Rogers, when he was not sketching had sometimes made food and offered it to him, but he had not eaten it. The first two times that had happened it had come with a lecture about their mutually shared super soldier metabolism and caloric intakes with Rogers suspecting that his may have been a bit lower, but still burning at a fast rate. It was how he learned the quickest and easiest protein intake was through eggs.

The pain in his head had dulled to a manageable level, his distance away from Rogers giving him a hint of relief, but also making him feel oddly displaced, like he was missing something from a whole he did not know he had.

“Oh, would you look at that,” the waitress returned with a mug, and a plate of the food he had ordered. She set the mug down and poured coffee in it before sliding over a small ceramic square full of different types of sugar. He reached out and took the salt shaker instead and poured a bit into his mug before stirring it.

“Huh, Navy boy?”

“Army,” he replied quietly. At least that was what he had gotten from Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes' file in the Smithsonian. The flashes of memories certainly seemed to confirm that he was Barnes, in some way or shape, but the name still did not exactly register with him when others spoke it; exception being when Rogers called him 'Bucky' or when Banner had snapped him out of his fugue state with his insistently eerie calm 'James!'.

“Well, thank you for your service, sir,” the waitress smiled before looking back up at the television, “wish I could say the same to Captain America himself because the guy really deserves that thanks, but hey, he's on screen right now-what? Senatorial emergency field hearing for Dr. Banner – hey Nancy! Your favorite Avenger's just made the morning headlines!”

He glanced up at the television and felt the brief spike of pain at the image of Agent Hill, the targ-Rogers, and Banner all walking up what looked like the stairs to the New York City Supreme Court across from Foley Square on Centre Street. He also noted the abrupt rise in volume at the other patrons and those walking in the terminals as some started to crowded around television and read the topical headline scrolling across the screen. [ Avengers Subpoenaed To Appear In Court ] The secondary headline on the bottom of the topic bar said [ Emergency Congressional Field Hearing Called To Discuss Safety of Hulk ].

“Hulk's not a threat, that's bullshit,” another woman's voice spoke up near him and out of the corner of his eye, he made note that the new waitress' nameplate said [Nancy]. “Yeah, sure he kind of rolled on Harlem, but he totally trashed the aliens along with Cap himself! Cap saved me even while we had been trapped in the atrium on 42 nd and Madison.”

He noted that she was looking around at the rest of the restaurant, almost daring anyone to contradict what she was saying, but more than a few nodded as his waitress, Jen, reached for a remote to turn the volume up a little. He absently started into his food and ate while listening to the clinical report being said on the television.

“-again, breaking news; media sources are reporting that this emergency congressional field hearing is being held due to what has happened in Washington D.C. a few nights ago. As you may remember, we received grainy footage of what appeared to be a fight involving some of the Avengers at a local bank near Dupont Circle where five civilians were critically wounded and at least eight responding officers killed.”

A side-by-side live footage of Rogers, Hill, and Banner walking up the steps, pushing the throng of media away as Rogers and Hill kept Banner in the middle was interposed with grainy mobile phone video of the battle in the D.C. Bank. It showed Iron Man flying in the air firing several repulsor shots before the image showed the blur of Rogers in his red-white-blue uniform fighting someone with flashes of silver before he tackled him to the ground as the Hulk burst out from the bank and roared, making the camera shake.

“We have received unconfirmed reports that General Thaddeus Ross was the one who asked for this emergency field hearing. As you may know, General Ross was once the head of an attempt to bring about the super soldier program. We are trying to get a statement from Captain Rogers himself on his opinion of another super soldier program that failed-”

Rogers, dressed in full uniform was shown taking his shield off to give to a security officer before allowing himself to be scanned quickly by a handheld metal detector and waved through. The guard that had held onto his shield looked a little nervous, unsure if he should keep the shield or hand it back, but seemed to have decided to hand it over to Rogers with some whispered words and a quick salute to which Rogers returned with a kind smile.

_ He marveled at how Steve boosted morale each time their unit was sent to work with others out on the field. The others in the Commandos had joking first referred it to Steve's showgirling abilities, but he knew better. Steve was a born leader and it was times like these that he knew he would follow him to hell and back. His best friend had an understated kindness as he always took the time to talk to the other men, even those wounded. He could see the change in their eyes, their willingness to keep hope when they had all been downtrodden and bitter at how the war was going. _

The cameras had focused on the guard who Rogers had talked to and one or two microphones had been shoved into his face, but the guard had shaken his head before stepping back, declining to comment, as Agent Hill and Dr. Banner were waved through. And somehow, he knew that it was what Rogers always did; personal words spoken in privacy and the recipient unwilling to share or confide those words.

“We'll get back to the hearing after we have our cameras in there, but for now we have our political analyst here to discuss what this means for the Avengers, for former members of SHIELD like Maria Hill working for the Avengers-”

He tuned out the analyst segment as he continued to eat, pretty certain the foreign feeling that felt a little like pride, or something close to it, not from the coffee or hot food.

* * *

Steve lowered his right hand as he, Bruce, and Maria finished swearing into the session and took his seat, setting his helmet to his left as the two of them flanked Bruce at the table before the field hearing committee. His shield sat next to him, leaning against the table. General Ross was not quite sitting in the middle, but nor was he sitting at the edges. A hard-nosed Senator name Brandt sat in the middle and he vaguely wondered if this Brandt was related to the same Brandt who had drafted him to work on the USO tours. There were a few other military personnel, one at least from the other branches of service, but a majority of them were Army. Filling out the rest of the panel were senators whom Steve did not recognize.

If there was one thing he had been immensely grateful for, it was that Fury had kept away all of the political personnel from him since he had woken up from the ice. Granted he had to shake hands on occasion and had to meet a few when he officially got his honorable discharge papers after joining SHIELD proper – still unofficially retaining his rank in SHIELD's databases – but Fury kept a majority of them away from him.

“This hearing was brought forth by General Thaddeus Ross to investigate the illegal seizure of government property by Stark Industries-”

“Pardon my interruption Senator, but there was no such notation on the subpoena handed to our offices this morning of such seizure,” Maria cut in smoothly and professionally.

“The address of the subpoena does denote the government property that was seized,” Senator Brandt replied testily, “and I ask that you please not further interrupt until asked, Ms. Hill. We are all well aware of your recent hearings in Washington D.C. for SHIELD and this whole HYDRA debacle.”

“Understood,” Maria replied sweetly, but Steve could see the viper's grin in her smile as she sat back in her chair.

“As I was saying. This hearing is for the illegal seizure of government property and the United States Army's request to retrieve such property for purposes of national security. Now then, Ms. Hill, we understand that Stark Industries has had previous contracts with the United States military and access to some secrets that may have enabled Stark Industries to acquire a few assets on the side to further research. But those contracts have long expired and such government property much be returned.”

“I take it you're not talking about Mr. Stark's Iron Man suits, right? Because, well, that kind of didn't go so well for the last Senator who tried to take the suits away. In fact, he got arrested for being a HYDRA mole,” Maria said dryly to the chuckles of those in the gallery and Steve managed to keep a stoic expression on his face. He had not know that she had such a dry humorous streak, but he supposed that he had only seen one side of Maria Hill and that was her no-nonsense SHIELD persona.

“Are you implying-” Brandt had gone a bit red-faced while Maria shook her head.

“Not at all, Senator, merely making sure this is not about Tony Stark and is, after all, about a living human being named Dr. Bruce Banner whom you keep insisting as  _ government property  _ like he is some kind of inanimate object.”

Steve resolutely kept his face still at the sudden swooping anger that filled him. He had been a little confused at the Senator's opening remarks about government property and the like before Maria's words made him realize that he had been talking about Bruce. And making Bruce sound like something that was to be passed around without a care. It seemed that the rest of the gallery also came to that realization as the rapid clicks of cameras tried to catch photos of everyone's reactions and the people themselves had hushed whispers.

“That statement is true,” General Ross took over for the Senator and Steve stared at him, white-haired, bushy mustached, and an angry disposition written all over his face. He had heard that the General had steadily risen his way up the ranks after starting his service in Vietnam before given control of one of the Army's scientific divisions that had tried to replicate the super soldier serum. “Dr. Bruce Banner is government property. His blood is holding highly classified materials and  _ radioactivity _ that makes him a danger to those around him. He has already killed several civilians and military personnel as well as endangered countless of others in highly volatile situations.”

There were a few murmurs of agreement from the gallery behind him, and Steve could see the small satisfied smile on the General's face as well as some of the other military personnel in the room.

Maria nodded before commandeering the microphone, “An apt statement, very much like the files that SHIELD used to have on Dr. Banner. I'm sure a search of those files would say the same thing.” The gallery twittered behind them and Steve could imagine a lot of them already accessing their mobile phones – even though hearing rules allowed no cellphones – to search for the SHIELD file dump on that very subject.

“During your time with SHIELD, you brought in Dr. Banner to work for you, am I correct, Ms. Hill?” another senator spoke up and Maria nodded.

“Yes, the emergency crisis with Loki dictated that an expert in gamma radiation be brought in to consult. Dr. Banner proved immensely helpful with the algorithm he created with Mr. Stark. Director Fury promised that SHIELD would not search for the good doctor in the aftermath.”

“Surely you had inklings that Dr. Banner was working for Stark Industries after the battle in New York. After all, wasn't Howard Stark one of SHIELD's vaunted founders? Perhaps it was really HYDRA underneath it all-”

“Senator Ryan, I think we are leaving the topic and that is of Dr. Banner,” Senator Brandt stepped in and held up a hand to his fellow Senator who nodded and sat back, but the damage was already done. “Ms. Hill, you have anything to add?”

“Yes sir, thank you sir,” Maria smiled toothily, but Steve instead paid attention to Brandt. He seemed like a hard-ass in his opinion, but his cutting of the Senator's inflammatory statements and focusing back on the topic at hand seemed like it was to at least moderate the whole field hearing. Maybe he was not as opinionated and set in his ways as he had originally thought.

“Dr. Banner's contributions has been invaluable, both to crises around the world and to the scientific community itself. He is a cautionary tale to those who wish to replicate the super soldier serum, but at the same time an exemplary tale of kindness and understated compassion to those who are less fortunate than himself,” Hill stated, “Stark Industries' medical component was able to isolate the health benefits of the Extremis virus instead of turning it into a weaponized component when it was first developed by Advanced Idea Mechanics; something that could not have been done without Dr. Banner's achievements in the field of molecular biochemistry. While there is still much testing to be done, I am proud to say that Dr. Banner thinks Stark Industries would be able to help our fellow veterans regain far greater mobility than current technology within the next few years.”

Steve refused to let the surprise show on his face at the news and caught Bruce's eye who minutely shrugged. He instantly realized that it was perhaps a joint effort between him and Tony before seeing two of Bruce's fingers semaphore out the letters 'L-O-K-I' and realized that there were plans; but it was mainly due to the healing stones and whatever poisonous magick Loki had sussed out two years ago for Maria to say what she said.

“How do we know Stark Industries isn't going to create Extremis soldiers like AIM did?” one general from the Air Force spoke up, her voice concerned, but not gruff.

“I would think AIM's kidnapping of Stark Industries' CEO would have been a deterrent,” Maria shot back a bit dryly, “and this question is better directed to Colonel James Rhodes as he is overseeing this project having first hand knowledge about the Extremis soldiers and was responsible for the arresting of Trevor Slattery as well as the rescuing of President Ellis.”

The gallery behind them murmured their approval and Steve suppressed the small smile that threatened to appear on his face. SHIELD knew of Tony's involvement in the kerfuffle with AIM and the true Mandarin, Aldrich Killian, but the public at large only heard that Tony's best friend Rhodey had been involved since Tony had been sort of still declared dead in the aftermath. It was only after his successful surgery to remove the shrapnel from his chest that he had himself not declared dead – using the excuse of surgery for his non-involvement.

“You say he is a cautionary tale against those who wished to replicate the super soldier serum, Ms. Hill,” General Ross spoke up, “so even you must know the dangerous qualities of his blood, radioactive and poisonous to anyone who even touches it or gets near it, the constant stressful situations that makes him into...a liability.”

There were clicks of cameras as the reporters around them whispered amongst themselves and Steve saw Bruce quirk up a crooked smile sardonically.

“Yes, I do,” Maria leaned forward into the microphone, “was there an inquiry to your statement?” Steve willfully suppressed another grin that threatened to appear on his face, especially since Ross frowned.

“Should this not be grounds for containment-”

“Why?” Maria interrupted.

“I believe I am asking the questions here Ms. Hill-”

“If you're asking whether or not Dr. Banner here should be locked up just because his blood can make people sick, that he occasionally sometimes turns into an unstoppable green-rage-monster – you can thank Tony Stark for that name – because of  _ people hunting him like an animal _ and has literally done  _ nothing _ to endure the hate and vitriol also because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time for an experiment that  _ you _ , General Ross, sir, approved with  _ federal funding _ , then no. I do not think he should be contained.”

Ross' face turned a little redder, verging on purple before Brandt put a hand on his own to stop him from saying anything and nodded towards Bruce, “Dr. Banner, Ms. Hill has been a valiant champion for you, do you wish to add anything?”

Bruce cleared his throat and sat forward, “Nothing really, except to personally apologize to the General. I know...it's probably not enough, but I'm truly sorry.”

The gallery burst into puzzled murmurs as everyone looked at General Ross who looked like he was about to eat his microphone as he visibly grounded his teeth. After what seemed like a minute of consideration the General leaned forward and spit out his next words. “You should have thought of that before all of this.”

Bruce only smiled a sad-looking smile and nodded as he accepted the words without flinching. Steve was not too sure about what they were talking about before the memory of a name and pretty face passed through his mind.  _ Dr. Elizabeth 'Betty' Ross _ . When Fury had given him the packet for Dr. Banner for him to read on his way to the Helicarrier three years ago, he had not exactly paid attention to the notation of Dr. Ross under General Ross' project with Bruce to recreate the super soldier serum. He had only briefly met Dr. Ross two years ago when Loki had warned them of the coterie's plans to attack their loved ones. He had been laid up in the medical ward and had been unable to go with the others on the rescue missions. Even living at the Tower for the past year, Bruce had been very private about his life and Steve was too polite to inquire.

Now, he realized that it was very personal between General Ross and Bruce. That something had happened during the experiment to Dr. Ross that had torn a gaping rift between the two of them. The General was not only after Bruce because of the Hulk, but because of a personal grudge against him.

“Ms. Hill, do you wish to add anything in regards to this hearing?” Senator Brandt spoke up.

“Yes, only one statement: You are making a mistake if you think to arrest Dr. Banner and detain him, and I'm not talking about SHIELD, HYDRA, Stark Industries, or even the Hulk whom you all seem to fear more than the Major Emil Blonsky, better known as the Abomination – who, by the way, really did destroy Harlem, not the Hulk.”

“Indeed...” Brandt looked nonplussed, before opening his mouth once more, “then we will adjourn-”

“Sir,” Steve spoke up as he realized that Ross and the Senator had already made their decisions. He had also realized that they did not realize how much of an impassioned speech Hill had spoken to turn the tide of the public against them. They wanted to adjourn the inquiry to do some public damage control and he was not about to let them get away with bullying Bruce to the media. “If I may add something before you call this hearing?”

This time there was a more visible and interested reaction behind Steve as he ignored the flash of cameras, the almost hungry-look the reporters covering the hearing looked. Senator Brandt and General Ross both looked flat-footed, but Brandt smiled blandly and nodded, knowing the consequences of denying him the request to speak – he was, after all Captain America. He slowly stood up consciously standing at parade rest, aware that all eyes were on him.

“It was not my intention to speak today, after all, I am here for Dr. Banner's support as his friend, not as his commanding officer,” he picked his words carefully, “but it seems to me that you wish to lock him up because he is government property, right?”

“...Yes...” Brandt was staring at him shrewdly, picking his own words carefully.

“The first thing said to me by my commanding officer, Colonel Phillips, after I failed to stop the HYDRA spy from killing Dr. Erskine, was that I should be locked up somewhere like a lab rat because I was government property and have tests run on me. He wanted a hundred more of me and I was the only success,” it was something he had never seen published, not even spoken by Peggy in the interviews that she had given over the years. It was also something he had suspected Phillips deeply regretted judging by his interviews during the time he was on ice. “A kind Senator, by the name of Thomas Brandt, thought I could have been better serving my country on USO tours instead of being stuck in a lab.” He met the Senator's gaze and saw the recognition and slight chagrin on the current Senator Brandt's face and knew that this one was related to the Brandt he had known back in the war.

The hushed murmurs were growing in volume, but no one seemed to want to stop them, all of them hearing the story of how Steve Rogers, right after being super-soldier'ed almost became a lab rat and instead became what they had known in the biographies, a USO showgirl before launching his rescue of the 107 th and other battalions.

“So,” Steve kept his voice and gaze steady as he stared at both Ross and Brandt, “what I am saying is that even though you have given me an honorable discharge, you may recall me to active service to serve my country. If you truly wish for the super soldier serum, I am willing to serve my country and perform all of the tests you wish me to do. Maybe that will give you your needed results and there won't be anymore people scrambling for the serum.”

The room erupted in loud shouts and Steve felt the burning startled gazes of both Bruce and Maria on him.

“Steve-!”

“What the hell are you-”

Senator Brandt immediately started banging a gavel onto the table as the room slowly quieted down before glaring at him. Steve met that glare with an equally placid gaze of his own, keeping his back ramrod straight and standing at attention instead of parade rest. “I don't know what the hell you're playing at  _ Captain _ , but we have laws against this type of indentured servitude that you seem to think is back from before the Civil War-”

“No sir,” he cut the Senator off firmly, “I am volunteering.”

“If this is some kind of stunt...”

“No sir,” he shook his head once, “this is not a stunt. I was once asked by Dr. Erskine why I volunteered and if it was because I wanted to kill Nazis. I did not want to kill anyone, but I told him I hated bullies.”

The Senator's eyes darted around the panel as well as the gallery behind Steve that he could hear was quiet again, all hanging onto his words. No one missed the implications of his words, he was sure of that. He certainly knew that this was going to at least stay on the news for a while. He also knew that he had just told Bucky – if he was watching this at JFK or perhaps already flying in the air – that he would not readily pursue him, but let him do what he needed to do going after Strucker. If General Ross and Senator Brandt did take him up on his volunteerism, reinstated him back to the army to their scientific division, then it was the least he could do for Bruce and for Bucky.

He could feel something uneasy well up within him, watching the unreadable looks on their faces, but refused to let it show and kept his expression passive and firm.

The various other Senators and military personnel were looking at each other, coming to silent conclusions as both Brandt and Ross had stony expressions on their face. There was a few minutes of silent communication before Brandt nodded once, sharp, and cleared his throat. “Your honesty and self-sacrifice is admirable, Captain, but it is the decision of this panel as well as those in the Armed Forces that you have concluded your service to this country.” The Senator paused for a moment, seemingly drawing upon his full authority – and perhaps for the nearly silent media crowded around the hearing, trying to salvage the situation. “All charges and inquiries to Dr. Bruce Banner's status will also be dropped in recognition of his service and contributions to the scientific community as well as the Avengers.”

The gallery cheered and Steve blinked, feeling a wave of relief as he stoically nodded; almost drowning out the prickling feeling of something not right. Brandt however was not done as he slammed the gavel several more times.

“However, this panel also deems the danger of the Hulk as one of caution. Captain, as you had said, you were here for Dr. Banner as a friend, not as his commanding officer. But you are the Avengers' leader and so the responsibility falls upon you to ensure the safety of civilians and those caught in the crossfire of...bullies...from the Hulk's immeasurable strength and penchant for wanton destruction. I trust you will be discreet or else we will find ourselves back here again and your volunteerism taken in a far more serious matter.”

“Yes sir,” he automatically snapped off a salute, to which was returned by the military persons on the panel as the gallery cheered again and sat back down.

“This panel is adjourned,” the Senator's voice was barely heard over the roar of cheers from the gallery, clicks of camera shutters, and reporters trying to clamor past the gate, to talk to the three of them, but were barely being held back by the security guards.

Steve smiled in relief as he met Bruce and Maria's gaze, but still could not shake the feeling of something not quite right. He looked around, keeping the smile on his face as Bruce and Maria frowned a little.

“Steve what's-”

Bruce never finished what he was saying as in that moment, Steve caught the eye of one of the guards in the far corner of the room, near one of the main exits, glowing a brilliant red, teeth bared in a deathly smile-

Steve immediately grabbed his shield and threw it towards the guard who was deliberately overloading herself from the Extremis virus, and knew it was too late-

The room exploded in a wash of fiery pain and horrific screams as he blacked out.

* * *

 


	13. Chapter 13

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 13_

 

Command presence. That was one of the first words that Tony had learned, not from his days taking over Stark Industries' military contracts, but rather from his father. He had learned that from the many stories his father had told him about Captain America when he was very young; until he had learned to name the jealousy in him and stop those stories after a rather ugly shouting match. But the two words still stuck with him after he had taken over Stark Industries with Obie and had rubbed elbows with military bigwigs. Hell, even his best friend Rhodey had the 'command presence' – after all, he would not have gotten to his position without some military bearing and knowledge. Granted, maybe a little greasing of the wheels since he was Tony Stark's best friend might have helped, but Tony knew that Rhodey was proud of his service on the front lines before being regulated to a semi-desk job that occasionally called for wrangling their semi-former weapons contractor and being War Machine – or Iron Patriot as the current administration was still calling it.

And wondered if Steve had not been put on ice, would he have been one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and maybe the Cold War would have been resolved a lot sooner and today's current Middle East conflicts and Arab Spring might not have been as deadly as it was at this rate? Would HYDRA have not existed and taken down SHIELD?

Because Steve certainly exuded 'command presence' and then some.

He watched in wry amusement as each word spoken by the leader of the Avengers hit the assembled generals, one admiral, one vice admiral, and the senior Senators on the panel like painted targets. The media behind Steve was certainly lapping up his words. He could almost see the frenzy, speculation, and analysis of his words, but not one camera could doubt the sincerity, the  _ command presence _ , the truth behind his words because everyone knew that Steve Rogers, that Captain America, could not readily lie. It was not in his blood or bones, no matter how much people tried to speculate. Steve wore his heart on his sleeve, open, bleeding, and perhaps a little too honestly for this cynical day and age.

But that was what made people respect Steve Rogers and Tony certainly could attest to that. He thought he would end up  _ hating _ the man that his father never shut up about; could not even compare to, but realized he could not because...well...he really did not exactly know why. But if he had to admit, only to himself, it was because deep down, he respected Steve – not that he would ever tell him that. It was enough that Coulson was an unapologetic fanboy, complete with trading cards. Steve did not need to know that at a very young age, Tony Stark had programmed his robots to adore Steve Rogers and his Howling Commandos like the big brothers he never had, to pretend to have the adventures they had in the comics.

“And here I thought he could not even top the speech he gave before bringing SHIELD and HYDRA down,” Sam sipped at his orange juice, staring at TV as the two of them watched.

Thirty-thousand feet in the air, Stark Industries' satellites had given them access to almost every country's broadcast news and before the hearing had started, Tony had taken the time to flip through them. The Avengers were certainly a major player in international politics, even though they were strictly not for political usage, but at least it seemed a majority of the world – even those who claimed to hate America – were in agreement that if the Avengers were investigating something, then it was for the betterment of the world itself. That thought, in of itself, was dangerous, but Tony could see the merits of the good deeds they had done, even though they had not officially been active since before SHIELD went down.

Luckily, the Avengers had not taken too bad of a reputation hit with SHIELD's demise, but he suppose the saving of Earth from an imminent alien invasion stuck with everyone for a long time. Their own individual exploits were up for debate, Tony was no stranger to perception and playing to audiences, but at the same time he was also not cynical enough to spin his heroics as Iron Man to the benefit of an individual few. Maybe it was something about using his knowledge and powers for good that came from Yinsen, or even his father's old Cap stories – most of the time. At least Rhodey and Pepper dragged him out of the fire those few times he let it get to his head...

“Inspiring,” Tony muttered absently as he listened to Senator Brandt's statement in response to what Steve had said. He was already thinking of ways to spin this once he landed in London. Pepper had already said that she would release a statement about half-an-hour before he actually landed so that the media would be prepped and waiting for his statement. He had seen the hungry look that General Ross had worn throughout the hearing, the eagerness taking a hit when he had seen Steve walk in with Hill and Bruce. It had returned when Brandt adopted the strategy of keeping all questions on Maria, not allowing Steve the chance to speak until the very end when the panel could not deny his request without setting off a media firestorm.

Steve's statement about working angles earlier in the Tower had made Tony realize that he was not as naïve to the manipulation of the public and of information as everyone thought he was. The fact that he had immediately mentioned his USO days after that statement reminded all of them that he knew what propaganda was and how it was used sometimes, for the betterment or detriment of those being manipulated. Steve was well aware of his own heroic symbol and the literal legend that he was in the public eye and had long decided to try to use some of that for the benefit of those who's reputations were mired in ambiguity – case in point, Bruce. Tony knew full well that Steve was hoping to also use it to help Bucky when the public realized that he and the Winter Soldier were the same.

And Tony could not help but feel a bit of pride at the  _ sneakiness _ of trapping both Brandt and Ross into a corner with his own volunteerism and reminder that he was  _ the _ super soldier every single experiment after him had tried to imitate. Howard had always mentioned the small pranks Steve and the other Commandos played to relieve tension during the war, but Tony had always dismissed them as part of the stories and like so many others, grew up believing that Captain America was utterly squeaky-clean. And like the iconic shield almost no one could see coming, he was hit with a  _ different _ side of Captain America.

Brandt finished his statement and Tony grinned wolfishly as the room burst into applause and cheers. He, Ross, and whoever else thought this was a  _ wonderful _ idea just got their asses handed to him. He wished he was there in person to give Ross another piece of his mind like he had at that dingy bar on the idea to release the Abomination, but he could settle for Steve taking the sneaky route instead of stomping all over the General's ego like he would have. The fact that Ross had finally sent a subpoena to bring Bruce out of hiding-

Tony frowned as he mulled the idea over, chewing his lower lip as he absently watched the television. Bruce had said that it would have happened sooner or later, especially since he was actually living in the Tower for the past two and half years, but when he ventured out it was disguised as one of the regular employees. Maria had said that Ross had probably took a shot in the dark and scored. It was plausible, given the fact that all of the public information about Bruce was in that petabyte of files on the Hulk that was released to the public. Intelligence analysts could easily have started putting together the dots and only arrive at their conclusion now...but the fact that there was grainy footage of their fight outside the bank in D.C. that the media itself was showing...

Tony did not believe in coincidences...not fending off multiple hostile takeovers, business meetings, shareholder placating news conferences, and certainly not as Iron Man – especially not after Obadiah Stane.

“...Oh fuck, that's-” Sam swore.

Tony looked up at screen in time to see the familiar glow of Extremis on a guard before a momentary bright blinding light followed by static. He swore, scrambling to his feet- Only to suddenly feel the bloom of heat and pain lashing across the back of shoulder, sending him tumbling forward, the breath suddenly leaving him as the roar of wind, shouting-

Tony found himself suddenly flying in the blue bright skies, nothing but air, scrambling to draw breath only to choke as he drew nothing – the bloom of panic because he was not able to breathe again- space- nuclear weapons- the Chiaturi! -because this high in the air there was  _ nothing _ for the pitiful human lungs to breathe in- He thought he saw Pepper's face appear before his eyes as his last conscious thought was to summon his armor to him-

* * *

It sounded like someone was yelling at the top of their lungs from down a very long tube for a long while, growing louder and louder before Steve suddenly heaved a choking breath and snapped open his eyes. He choked again, coughing as he drew in the acrid dusty scent of metal, concrete, plaster and involuntarily curled in on himself as he continued to cough, feel the long-absent, but familiar pain of searing  _ need-to-breathe  _ panic in his lungs almost like an asthma attack, when just as suddenly he was able to breathe. He opened eyes he did not know he had squeezed shut and took in the sight of fallen slabs of concrete, dusty plaster that still hung like clouds in the air. Rebars and twisted metal sticking out this way and that and the congealing black-red blood pooling as bodies were crushed, half-crushed, or impaled upon the debris of what used to be the hearing room in the courthouse.

His eyes drifted towards the door and he swallowed heavily, taking in the sight of what was clearly the left-behind-shadow imprint of people that had died instantly in the blast of the Extremis suicide bomber at point-blank range.

“Cap? Cap? Steve?” his vision was suddenly obscured by the concerned look of Maria as he blinked twice, grimaced at the pain and sluggish feeling he had along with the ringing left in his ears and sat up, feeling the pull of cuts, lacerations, and cracking burns along various parts of his body. His ribs twinged painfully and he knew he probably cracked a few of them.

“I'm fine,” he said as he shook his head to clear the worst of the cobwebs from his mind and rubbed his face, coming away with a wet slick feeling along the side of his head and down his ears. He glanced at his gloved hand to see it covered in blood, but knew that head wounds looked and bled far worst than what they were for the most part. “Sit rep,” he could feel the mild cotton-like feeling in his head and knew that he was somewhat concussed, but it was not bad enough for a nauseating concussion so that was good at least.

“You've only been out for a few seconds,” Maria, by contrast, looked rather hale and healthy and Steve saw beyond her the tense form of the Hulk, glaring at everything as he stood near them. Bruce must have immediately transformed to protect Maria from the blast. “Here,” she handed him his shield and he saw that a lot of the paint was wiped off, leaving the imprint of the silvery star and concentric circles along with superficial blackened burns of where he had at least hit the Extremis guard somewhat off her path before she completely exploded.

“Thanks,” he replied absently, taking the shield and reaching over for his helmet that had survived the blast, but was wedged between splinters of the table and slabs of concrete. He gingerly put his helmet on as Maria looked around and the Hulk turned, an inquiring growl as he stared down at them, his giant green chest heaving with barely contained rage. “I'm fine, Hulk,” he smiled wanly up at him to which he got a wuffing sound as the eyes looked him over for a minute. This close to the Hulk, he could clearly see the keenness of Bruce behind the simplistic protectiveness of the Hulk, melding with his alter ego to really determine if he was indeed fine and not exaggerating. Both seemed to come to the conclusion a second later that he was not going to fall to pieces with his wounds, but the slight narrowing of eyes told him that Bruce was most definitely going to have words with him later.

“Parts of the room's caved in, exit not viable in these circumstances, but there are secondary entrances,” Maria pointed out the fallen debris and the other side of the room where it was only half-covered in debris.

Steve knew where the exit points where from that secondary entrance, having, out of curiosity one day, been there to explore the newly-built building back in 1933. He and Bucky had explored the area and Steve was pretty sure that it had not changed much since the building had been built. “All right,” he turned to Maria, standing up a bit, ignoring the pull of his wounds. They all felt somewhat shallow, no deep bone-wrenching pain and he could feel some of it dulling already, his body healing up the more superficial ones. “Search for survivors, I'm going to get some of the guards and scout the exit.”

“HYDRA?” Hill stared at him and Steve nodded.

“HYDRA,” he replied, leaving the speculation at that. He could think of the reasons why – first and foremost being Bucky – as to why an Extremis guard had blown herself up, but shut that pattern of thought down until they were back in relative safety.

“Damn, it's fried. EMP within Extremis is the probable cause,” Maria was holding up her cellphone, which had a cracked screen and was dark before pocketing it with a small face of disgust as she moved to help the people closest to her that were just starting to get their bearings.

Steve headed over to the half-blocked entrance, noting a couple of the photographers and reporters near the entrance try to dig a way out. One was trying to make his cellphone work by banging it or pressing several buttons.

“EMP,” he called out to the small group, all of them turning to see him walking over to them.

“Cap, uh, you're bleeding-”

“It's not bad-” he started to reply but was cut off.

“What the fuck-”

The hoarse exclamation of surprise from General Ross was drowned out by a low growl from the Hulk and Steve turned around in time to see him take a menacing step forward to where Ross and several of the surviving military members and senators had woken up. All of them had been tossed to the ground or into things during the blast and most of them had bleeding cuts or broken bones.

Steve swore silently, this was not what he needed. “Hulk, come here,” he ordered and saw the big green guy narrow his eyes once at Ross before huffing and lumbering over, shaking the already precarious cracked, half-caved ceiling and floor, sending dusts of plaster everywhere.

A few people gave strangled screams and out of the corner of Steve's eye he saw the group that he had approached shy away, all of them looking somewhat fearful as the Hulk stopped in front of him, keen eyes waiting for his command.

“Someone subdue him-”

“General, that will  _ not _ be needed,” Maria called from where she was helping set a temporary splint on someone's leg.

Ross spluttered some more, but Steve ignored him as he glanced back at the debris and traced the pattern of the fall. “Okay,” he knew some basic architecture from working several missions with the Engineer Corps – most of them blowing up bridges or stonework structures during the war, “Okay...Hulk, I'm going to need you to prop some of these slabs while we get the survivors, out, okay? Can you do that?”

“Tiny humans,” Hulk growled out, a feral smile on his face that Steve returned weakly as the others around them stared, almost bug-eyed. The survivors skittered away as the Hulk approached the debris pile, stared around at the structure before picking one of the heavier pieces of concrete and shoved it to the side to brace another part of the wall before holding up a hand to what looked like spidery cracks near it.

Steve immediately stepped forward once the bigger pieces of debris were cleared out and rolled some of the smaller ones away, revealing bits and pieces of smashed wooden doors and bent metal armbars. He hammered it with his shield, clearing out some of the debris, enough for people to crawl through and peered out, noting that the corridor was clear for now.

“Uh, sir, uh, Captain America?” a slightly youthful voice behind him made him turn around to see one of the guards that had survived the blast approach him slowly, shooting occasional glances at the Hulk who stood nearby propping up the cracked point with an almost careless look about him. “Uh, Corporal Lee Adler, sir...um, I can help direct people out from this hallway, um, if you want-”

Steve nodded solemnly as he accepted the Corporal's offer to help. “If I tell you to duck and hide, you duck and hide,” Steve could see the bravery behind the slightly fearful eyes, but the young guard looked like he was trying to swallow the fear.

“Y-Yes sir,” Corporal Adler nodded as he drew out his gun and pointed it on the ground. “There's others still around?”

“Possibly,” Steve nodded before glancing beyond him to see the rest of the Senators and military starting to crowd around as was some of the non-injured reporters and civilians who were in the gallery. “Hill!” he called out and saw Maria's head pop up from a small mound of debris as she nodded curtly, “Start organizing the relief parties.”

“Captain, I can help direct the others from here,” the Air Force General who's nameplate said [O'Neill] spoke up from where she was cradling her wrist in a makeshift sling. Her blonde hair was matted and her face was dirt-streaked, but aside from her wrist, she did not look too injured.

“Thank you, General O'Neill,” he said before addressing the gathering crowd, “Listen, all of you will need to go in groups of ten. There is the potential of hostiles still around. Civilians and those without any military training, stay in the middle and help carry the wounded.” He turned to the guard, “Corporal Adler, since you know the layout of the building, I will need you to run the route to clear each group.”

“Sir,” the Corporal nodded before waving over several of the guards who did not look that seriously wounded.

“Is there anyone that can reach the security station to alert NYPD and the response teams outside that we have incoming wounded?” he turned back around to address the crowd.

“I can sir,” another guard spoke up. She was bleeding from a head wound, but looked mobile and alert. “Susan Yang, sir,” the guard saluted him briefly as she stepped up, all but ignoring the Hulk practically standing next to her. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw the Hulk snort in amusement, but did nothing else except to keep propping up the splintering cracks.

“All right, I'll take you there. Adler, you're with us, but I want you to stay in visual range with the group here,” he turned to General O'Neill, “Ma'am, if you would be so kind-”

“To help Ms. Hill arrange the groups, you don't have to be that deferential to me, Captain,” O'Neill gave a grimacing sardonic grin, “most of us are desk jockeys who haven't seen something like this in a very long time. You're in charge of the op.”

“Speak for yourself, O'Neill,” Ross muttered and the Hulk rumbled a growling noise of disagreement, but seemed to restrain himself from lashing out against the General.

“Cap, first wounded loaded up,” Maria's voice called from somewhere in the pile of rubble, before two people, one of whom was clearly a reporter judging by his outfit, and another who was in civilian clothing came clambering over a small mound. Between them was a makeshift stretcher made out of camera tripods and what was the flag of New York State.

“Cap, we've definitely got people trapped in rubble,” the reporter sounded breathless as he held up his end of the stretcher, only to nodded in thanks as the Vice Admiral on the panel, reached over to help ease the burden by carrying one of the ends.

“I've got first responder training,” surprisingly Senator Brandt stepped up and looked at the reporter, “which way son?”

“That way,” the reporter made a vague motion behind him and Brandt moved towards the direction he pointed.

“Okay,” Steve took a deep breath, suppressing a wince at the sudden jolt of pain and knew that he at least had cracked if not severely bruised ribs from where he had been thrown to the ground. “Hulk, you know what to do if anyone comes through this door.”

The Hulk grunted in acknowledgment before Steve turned to Corporal Adler and the guard Susan Yang. “The two of you, stay behind me at all times until I tell you otherwise. General, I leave the rest to you.”

“Good luck Cap,” O'Neill said as he crawled out, the two young guards following behind him as they scrabbled over the rocky debris.

Steve landed with barely a sound as he looked around, his senses on high alert for any ambushes. He would not put it past HYDRA to send Centipede or even pure Extremis soldiers after them even with the blast already doing much of the damage. The fact that there had been an Extremis soldier in the room, ready to self destruct bothered him, that all of it, the hearing, so soon after D.C., was just a set up. But the idea that General Ross was HYDRA also did not sit well with him... Maybe Ross had been played for a fool, or maybe Brandt was HYDRA, but he could not dwell on it, not at the moment. If Brandt really was HYDRA, he knew Maria could easily take care of herself and Brandt if it came down to that. Plus, there was the Hulk to consider... He trusted the Hulk to call out if the room looked like it was about to collapse in on itself, hence why he had him propping up the cracked areas. There was a calculating intelligence behind the Hulk that was perhaps not exactly part of Bruce Banner, but calculating enough to know strategy and the hows and whys of why he was stationed where he was by Captain America. That was good enough for Steve.

“Sir, the station is up these stairs and to your left,” Yang whispered behind him.

“Adler, stay here until I give the all clear, understood?” he said sternly, making sure that the young Corporal got the message loud and clear to  _ not _ even come up if there were sounds of gunfire.

“Yes sir,” Adler nodded as he glanced back and forth down the length of the hall, “sir, there's a secondary exit two doors down. It leads to Pearl Street and the back alley.”

“Thanks,” he replied as he continued upwards, Yang silent as a mouse behind him. They reached the main ground floor and Steve peered out, noting with narrowed eyes the signs of all of the guards, slumped over their stations. Blood poured out of their wounds and Steve saw the same guard that had held onto his shield when he went through the metal detector, staring lifelessly up at nothing, a bullet hole clean through his forehead.

There were no signs of life anywhere, even on the steps outside of the courthouse, but Steve could already hear the distantly loud sirens that told him NYPD was approaching as fast as they could. The shattered glass spilling everywhere told him that there was the possibility of snipers outside as well as enemies inside. It was heightened by the fact that he could feel the prickling sensation of being watched.

“Sir,” Yang whispered behind him, having not seen anything.

“They're here,” he muttered back and heard her draw out her gun. He drew back and turned to Yang who was staring at him, waiting for her orders even though her gun shook a little.

“Signal to NYPD that the wounded are going out the secondary exit and that they need counter snipers. Once you're done with that, get back to Corporal Adler and let him know of the situation and have him get Maria Hill to scout the secondary exit. You're going to stay at Adler's post until he gets back. If you hear the Hulk roar, leave the building immediately. Got it? Don't try to be a hero and take on HYDRA, leave them to me.”

“Yes sir,” Yang nodded, a bit shaky as she readjusted her grip on her gun.

“Ready?” he asked and she nodded again before he stood up and stepped out, walking calmly to where the metal detector was and stood with his shield in hand, watching and waiting.

Not even a few seconds later, several Centipede soldiers seemingly melted from the shadows of the entrance, stepping out from behind columns with their brightly red-glowing eyes as they surrounded him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Yang, pressed up against their hiding spot, gun drawn, but waited for him to completely distract them before she made her move.

“You can leave now with no hard feelings or pursuit,” he said as he loosened his grip on his shield.

Silence answered him and Steve gave them a humorless smile just as the first Centipede soldier lunged at him from behind. He easily side-stepped and threw his shield, catching the rebound off of a column and knocking one soldier to the ground and punched one of the black-clad soldiers in the face, raising his shield up to block several punches. None of the soldiers had drawn their guns, their situational awareness telling him that they were professionally trained enough to not shoot him while they were circling him, lest hitting one of their own. They charged him and he fought back, his wounds pulling in sharp staccatos of pain from the punches, lunges, and rolls he was inflicting upon them. A snap-kick sent one soldier into a column, cracking it, as he fell down dead, spine snapped in half while Steve whirled around, hitting another in the face. However, this Centipede soldier instead, staggered back, shaking his head before charging at him once more.

He knew, based on Coulson's information, that the Centipede soldiers themselves were a modification of a mashed-up super soldier serum, Extremis, and some alien technology most likely from the Chitauri, and that they hit harder than what most were used to. But Steve hit harder and did not pull on his hits and kicks like when he sometimes did during missions against regular enemy combatants. He spun and dropped, rolling as he used his shield to up-end a Centipede soldier before kneeling on his chest and knocking the soldier out with a clean smash of his head against the marbled flooring. Steve's instincts suddenly screamed in warning and he rolled off of the soldier to avoid the sudden blow of an ax-kick, launching himself to his feet in time to hold his shield up to block another kick, the resounding thonk of his shield echoing in the cavernous entrance.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Yang had left her position and charged forward, knocking aside two soldiers before they lunged at him from behind as he ducked and lashed out. He hoped that she had already finished telling the NYPD what was happening and was now back to tell Corporal Adler to evacuate through the other exit. He had twisted, trapping the arm of a Centipede and used it against his fellow soldier who had been trying to gang up on him when the rather loud cracking sound followed by a long scream made all of them stare outside for a second in time to see a dark-clothed body fall to the ground.

Another cracking report followed the sight of yet another body falling to the ground, this time across the street and Steve smiled grimly at the sound of sirens coming closer. Yang had did her job and the police were deploying counter snipers. Which meant-

He pushed off against a column, grabbing the arms of the soldier that he had twisted against him and charged backwards, ramming through the remains of the doors and glass before rolling. The two of them tumbled down the steps of the courthouse, out into the sidewalk and Steve flung the soldier off of him and into a car where he folded the twisted metal in half. He ducked and skittered to the side as another Centipede soldier leapt towards him, holding an electronic baton and Steve smelled the faint ozone of where it nearly singed his hair as he retaliated by trying to disarm the soldier.

He gritted his teeth as pain exploded near his kidneys as another soldier scored a hit and kicked, the pain lessening with the withdrawal of the baton. It was almost like fighting STIRKE Delta in the elevator again, except Steve knew these soldiers were faster and stronger than Rumlow's team. He grabbed his shield and blocked another blow, the sizzle of the baton making a throng sound against his shield and batted the soldier away, sending him into the jagged corner of the concrete stairs. Flipping over a railing, he lashed out, catching another one in the knees before stomping on his hand, making the soldier cry out before twisting and grunting as two more batons hit him in the shoulder and lower leg.

The crack of another sniper round in the air made him look up briefly to see something black falling from another building followed by excited shouts and screams around the corner of where he knew Pearl Street was. Good, that meant that the first responders knew that the wounded and survivors were coming out of-

Steve stumbled a little as two Centipede soldiers suddenly dropped to the ground, the messy spray of blood and brain matter splattering onto his already bloodied uniform. A second later, two loud reports made him realize that it was not counter snipers deployed by the NYPD, but rather there was only one who was reckless - maybe a little brain-addled - enough to consciously shoot two solders right next to him and  _ not miss _ . “Bucky...” he whispered before recovering enough from his shock to swipe the footing off of another Centipede soldier who saw his hesitation and attacked.

He bashed his shield against the soldier's face with a sickening crack, but turned and flipped over the shoulders of another one, sending the soldier flying into the air as he twisted and fought off the innumerable wave of Centipede soldiers that seemingly kept appearing and attacking. Just what were they after, sacrificing so many people like this, he wondered as he continued to fight off his attackers. His only saving grace was that none of them were using guns, but kept himself hyper aware of its presence. Just because they were trying to use their stun batons did not mean they were going to go for other weapons. Three more cracks and two more bodies fell to the ground around Steve, one punctured twice in the throat and stomach.

“-rooftop sniper position four-” he saw one of the Centipede soldiers suddenly speak into his wrist and realized that the soldiers had been deliberately sacrificing themselves to get a bead on Bucky's position.

They were after Bucky.

“Cap! Incoming!” he broke the arm of the soldier he had in his hold as Maria shouted to his left and he turned to see her crouched behind a damaged police car, a gun pointed towards him.

“Hill, they're after Bucky!” he shouted as he twisted and turned from blows, ignoring the way his wounds were now screaming at him to stop fighting and let himself heal. Pain was something he could deal with and push past.

“I know!” Maria shouted back, firing her handgun, surprisingly dropping a Centipede soldier with two shots to the face. “Hulk is-”

She never finished whatever she was saying as the remnants of the front entrance to the courthouse burst apart in a hail of glass and metal shards, the Hulk launching himself down the stairs in a giant green blur and grabbed two Centipede soldiers and bashed their heads together. Steve turned away in time to stop himself from seeing the pulpy mess the Hulk made of the two soldiers and knocked out another one with his shield as the report of a sniper rifle echoed in the air. He twisted, looking up, trying to figure out which building Bucky was perched on-

And thought he spotted the reflection of a sniper scope and the even smaller profile of a silvery arm in the far distance, across the small park, on top of the FBI building- And ran towards it, hoping that he had picked the right building and if he did, that he was not too late to help his friend. He knew he would only have one chance at this, especially since the Centipede soldier had made Bucky's position; whatever 'sniper position four' meant. “Hill! You're in charge!” he called out to Maria as he ran by and saw her grimly nod. He trusted the Hulk to keep the Centipede soldiers occupied as he ran across the park and towards the FBI building.

All of this was to draw Bucky out...and Steve would be damned if he let HYDRA take his best friend away from him again.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

[cackles like a loon]

 


	14. Chapter 14

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 14_

 

The rifle felt unfamiliar against his shoulder, but it did an efficient job as he downed two more black-clad soldiers that had been swarming the target Rogers. A part of him was confused as to why he kept missing, but another part of him supposed that getting rid of the black-clad soldiers made it a lot easier to actually target Rogers when the time came. The snipers on the roof had been his first targets, after acquiring his current rifle. It's previous owner, the sniper and his spotter's bodies were sprawled a few feet away, necks cleanly broken.

There were two magazines near him that he had stripped from the spotter. Nine shots had already been spent and there was one more left before he had to load another mag in the gun. He had wasted two shots on one of the targets earlier, the soldier moving past the gut shot he had given him before finally being finished off with a shot to the throat. He steadied his breath, taking a facsimile of familiarity as he lined up his last shot and fired, just as the green blur roar of the monstrous Hulk burst forth from the remains of the courthouse. Another black-clad soldier fell down to the ground dead as he pulled back, setting himself to change the cartridge in an automatic fashion. The Hulk was sure to sow confusion amongst the black-clad soldiers and he knew it would provide him the time to clear more of them in order to finally get his clean shot at the target-at Rogers-

He stuttered a little as he pulled himself from the scope, away from seeing the target through cross-hairs, away from-

Away.

This was another test...was it?

Boarding had been called for the flight to London. He could have been  _ away _ , could have been pursuing-

He blinked again, pinching the bridge of his nose at the sudden flare of pain, right behind his eyes, digging-

The cartridge. That was what he needed.

The cartridge. Sniper rifle...needed to clear the targets-

Rogers...targ-

He tightened the muscles in his flesh-and-blood hand as he felt the smallest of tremors, shaking him. Breathe. He needed-

_ To fight. _

But why did he have to fight? Because the test was-

He had passed, had he not? He had-

He had  _ not _ passed because he could not-

_ His eyes were blue and they were- _

Breathe.  _ I'm with you, 'till the end of the line... _

He needed to-

_-Survive!_

Even with his eyes closed, he had always been able to sense an approach and reacted instinctively, swinging his emptied rifle in a wide arc. He heard and felt the crack of bone breaking as his eyes snapped open to see a soldier dressed in gear that he vaguely recognized fall to the side from the force of his blow. He moved before the soldier could recognize that he was dazed from the blow and snatched him up by the throat in time to see the life fading from his eyes – the thumping impact of several bullets piercing the soldier in the back. He tossed the body to the side and ran, swiftly kicking another in the face, vaulting over him with a quick leap and rammed his metal arm into the neck of another one, snapping it with a pop.

He turned, the soft whining sounding of his arm powering up as he grabbed a soldier and threw him off of the rooftop at the same time, twisting out of a hand trying to yank the hood of his hoodie back. He heard the cloth rip and smashed the ball of his palm into a nose, feeling the spurt of blood dampening the ripped cloth before another soldier fell to the ground dead. The faint movement at the corner of his eye, made him duck and smash the back of his metal hand into the face of another before he turned inward towards the blow and plucked out the soldier's combat knife from its holster.

Twirling it once in his flesh-and-blood hand, he gripped it and slammed it into the chest of another before kicking the hapless soldier to the ground. He flipped to the side, avoiding a blow and graze to the neck, slamming into another body before hands grabbed at him. He fought past the hold, elbowing the soldier in the midsection, hearing the crack of the man's sternum through the hard plates of kevlar and turned outward, sending an arcing kick to the man's face and sent him tumbling to the ground. In that second, he assessed his surroundings, noting many black-clad soldiers, but none whom looked like they were the ones Stark had been shouting about as Centipede back at bank vault with their glowing blood-red eyes.

“Whoa big guy...remember me? We've...worked together,” a voice, whom he could once think was being congenial and friendly, but hiding the viper's strike behind them, spoke up from behind one of the soldiers and stepped out.

He narrowed his eyes at the balaclava and helmet on the man's head. Kohl grease paint surrounded his eyes, giving him the look of wearing a white, skull-like death's head on his face. The twin bandoleers strapped across his chest made him think of skulls and crossbones on the Jolly Roger flag.

_ “You...don't happen to have one of those, do you?” he swallowed; he had to be hallucinating. The crazy HYDRA-Nazi guy just ripped his face off and a blood-red skull stared back at them. It was still talking too... _

He dared not squeeze his eyes shut against the sudden jarring memory, before blinking rapidly to clear his vision, to focus on the enemies that had paused in their attack, surrounding him. He shifted his grip on his stolen combat knife and assessed the hostiles around him.

“Yeah, I guess this kind of doesn't seem familiar to you,” the man's voice was tight with forced joviality and it prickled something akin to annoyance in him as he watched the man gesture to his balaclava and helmet-clad face, “...anyways, soldier, we're here to take you in...quietly. You need help and we don't want to cause any problems, okay? We want to help you.”

_ “We, the Avengers, want to help you, if you'll let us,” Banner said... _

“Yeah?” the skull-masked man's voice still sounded tight and strained as he took a small step forward. “We want to help you get better, soldier. Make the pain go away.”

_ “I'm causing the pain, aren't I?” _

_ He _ caused it, and it had clawed at him, shouted and screamed at him to  _ do _ something about it, but he had silently shouted back that he should not, would not- Because if he did- The target-no, Rogers...

_ “I'm sorry,” the voice was so forlorn... _

The target's voice had been so forlorn, so apologetic. He...he did not want such an apology –  _ It's me that should be apologizing! _ \- because he had caused the pain that he, himself felt, because he could not-

_ They sat in silence for a few minutes before Tony gestured to his metal arm, “You should get that looked at.” _

Stark knew the dangers, knew the warnings, and had in utter disregard for everything,  _ still _ worked on his arm, hesitating when he had not vocalized his absolute concent for an object to be placed in his arm because he was too used to people maintaining his arm without his own input. And still...had given him the object to place in his arm himself in the very end. Before...

Coward-

He took the coward's way out. Not the soldier's way out- He had...

_Steve knew what he had seen and shook his head, “Bucky wanted to come.”_

_“But-”_

_“He wanted to come,” he insisted and saw Sam's face pinch a little before he gave a brief nod._

It could have been so easy, disabling the target's allies back then and there at the vault, but he had not. Something had held him back and he had begged, pleaded for the target to end his life, to end all of this at the vault because he could not, would  _ not _ , end the target himself and because he was too cowardly-too much of a weapon, to  _ goddamn messed up _ ! - he-

“It's okay, it's okay. We're here to help, okay? We're here to help,” the voice of the masked man  _ was _ familiar. He had worked with him before as he vaguely noticed gestures, of black-clad clothing coming closer...

Why had he come back when he had been so close to leaving, so close to boarding the airplane?

_ “We, the Avengers, want to help you, if you'll let us,” Banner said... _

_“...if you'll let us...”_

_ They _ asked for his consent. They asked for permission.

_“Help me...” his best friend whispered and all Steve could do was nod as Bucky's eyes rolled into the back of his head as he passed out._

_“Always.”_

He gave  _ them _ , permission because...

_ “We, the Avengers, want to help you, if you'll let us,” Banner said... _

He had asked for  _ his _ , for the target's help because it had been a test, right? It was a test and his eyes were blue and they were concerned, because getting close to the target was the test because he needed to be close to the target in order to kill the target because the test would have failed, the test would have passed, because he did not kill the target- because-

_ Steve'n'Bucky... _

_ Bucky'n'Steve _ ...

_ “And I'll keep protecting you, even if you can't...” _

Why had he run at top speed, using every single enhancement he vaguely remembered getting, pushing himself when he had seen the explosion rock the field hearing? Why had there been a panic, a desperation that settled in his heart? The test...

_“I'm with you, 'till the end of the line...”_

Fuck the test.

It felt different than the quiet  _ snap  _ that had seemingly broke through his mind days earlier, when he had burst from the lab room and onto the Avengers' Tower balcony, to stop himself from actively killing the target. It felt different because it felt like someone had thrown bright lights into his eyes, pain roiling around his head, making him choke, and nearly curl in on himself. He thought he saw the shadowy movement around him back away just slightly, as he grabbed his head and held on for dear life; riding the wave of agony that felt like someone stabbing knives into his eyes, into the back of his head and never relenting-

And suddenly he could  _ see _ .

He gave  _ them _ , gave  _ him, _ permission because...

Because...

Because...he, Steven Rogers, trusted  _ him,  _ the forgotten man, the soldier, the assassin with no name...

And they had asked for his trust, his tacit approval in return, time and time again. They had asked if he wanted his arm repaired, even asking him again if he was sure. They had allowed him to come to the bank even though it was against every known judgment to bring someone like  _ him _ there. They had even given him a way to hunt his target and had allowed him to do whatever he wished. He had trusted them and they had given him trust back; had allowed him to...be...free...

“That's right soldier...just calm down, we're here to help...”

He wanted, needed, to hear the words that followed –  _ if you'll let us _ – but there was silence after those words, nothing to give him confirmation that he had a voice, a say in what was happening even after the first tacit approval. And he knew. He knew through the pain, the fading ache behind his eyes, that the people around him would not give him that and would sooner take it away even if he begged, he had begged –  _ I knew him! _ \- had demanded that he give a mission report, that the cold nights on rooftops, the never ending watch of the Avengers Tower for eleven months, the approach, all of it...they would sooner not care and it would not matter because-

“It's okay soldier-”

“...James...” he whispered and while he felt the disconnect and slight spiking of pain, it was oddly muted, as he looked up into the face of the masked man, standing arms length away from him, one hand held out in a wary, almost-comforting gesture as if to embrace him.

Or just as quickly strike him.

There was the barest of twitches from the formless balaclava, “Sure. Whatever you say, soldier, just-”

_ James _ knew that his close quarter combat skills were tight, efficient, and very deadly, preferring to let his metal arm do the heavy work and his flesh-and-blood arm the more precision work, especially with a knife in his hand. That said, as soon as he registered the tiniest of thrown objects, he immediately twisted, grabbing the object with his left metallic arm – saw the twitching of the jawline from the masked man, a smile of triumph-

And watched as rivets of electricity exploded from where his hand was clamped over the object, racing up his arm and grimacing as the slight sting of pain transferred in the shoulder socket and joint area of his arm while the rest of his hand felt oddly weird. But the electric shock passed harmlessly over his metal arm. He immediately crushed the object in his hand, feeling the slightly crunch of something plastic and metal before lashing out, grabbing the masked man and stabbed him in the chest with his knife hand. He withdrew the knife and tossed him to the side just as several strangled screams erupted from the back of the small contingent of soldiers.

A few turned, distracted by the noise and he took advantage of it by suddenly grabbing one of the soldier, turning his gun upside down just as he fired, directing the muzzle blasts towards his fellow soldiers. They fell down as he twisted, bringing the body close to him as several bullets impacted his human shield. He finished the dying soldier off with a twist of his neck and saw a flash of red hair followed by the buzz of electricity-

“ _ Catch! _ ”

The command was in Russian, but it rolled through his head easily and with barely a murmur of pain, as he reached out and plucked the gun thrown at him out of the air. Flicking the safety off he turned and fired, killing three soldiers with precision headshots through their goggles as the red-haired blur took down several others with lunges, slides, and kicking flips. He saw two soldiers approach beyond the feminine blur of red-hair and black leather jacket and without thinking, flicked the safety back on before tossing the gun at her-

“ _ Two behind,”  _ he called out just as he lifted his right arm and stabbed a soldier in the chest with a backhand, embedding the knife deeply within his sternum.

He pulled it out just as quickly as she ducked and rolled to her feet, her hand almost casually outstretched with a long-forgotten familiar ease, as the gun landed in her palm and she fired, killing four more including the two that were behind her. He threw his knife at a fifth one who had tried to line up for a shot as she had turned to deal with the two behind her. The crooked smile that graced her lips sent a jolt of familiarity within him, but there was no accompanying pain like when it had involved Rogers. He found it odd, but pushed it from his mind as he sensed an attack from the side.

He turned and lifted his metal arm to block the hammering blow and was mildly shocked to find himself stumbling back from the  _ force  _ of the blow as much as hearing a hollow metal sound where his arm had barely protected him.

“Rumlow stand down!” the red-haired woman shouted in English from where she was, pointing her gun.

“Ain't gonna do you any good sweetheart, not with pure Extremis in my veins,” the skull-masked man's eyes glowed, a bright fiery orange-red as he suddenly found himself defending from rapid, fast, furious blows. “And you, Winter Soldier, got a bit of an upgrade to your arm, didn'tcha?”

_ James _ did not bother with the dignity of a reply as he heard the whirl of his arm, block two body strikes, a kidney strike and kicked back with his own. He shuffled forward, a knife-like strike from above with a hand, twisting his arm in, then back, to block a shot to his chest, all the while trying to figure out how to beat his opponent. The fatal chest wound he had thought had given to the skull-masked man, Rumlow, showed only the tattered remains of kevlar and cloth. He could see glowing lines of red running underneath the wound, a sign of Extremis if all of the internet articles he read were true in the eleven months of staking out.

Which meant-

He let loose a hiss of pain as one of Rumlow's hands suddenly glowed and he blocked it with his right arm, mindful of where the strike was supposed to be headed. He could suddenly smell the stench of burnt melted cloth, skin, and flesh underneath and twisted out of the block, backing up a step. The man only laughed and he felt a twinge of annoyance run through him as he quickly reassessed his options. He heard the thunk of two bullets impact Rumlow's back and head, but the man only grinned and glanced behind him-

He moved, striking fast with his metal arm to wrap around in a choke hold, his flesh-and-blood one twisting one of Rumlow's hands behind his back as his other one tried to dislodge the grip on his neck and he kicked the man's legs, breaking his kneecap, forcing him to the ground.

“ _ Do it! _ ” he growled out to the woman in Russian as he pinned Rumlow to the ground with his metal hand, trying to squeeze on the throat and face turning red from the lack of oxygen, just as he saw the hand on his metal arm glow bright red, his metal arm starting to glow from the transference of heat- “ _ Natochka! Do it now! _ ” he did not know if that was even the woman's name, but it sounded right as he realized he would not be able to hold on to Rumlow if there was not an application right now of electric shocks-

White-hot pain screamed across his metal arm, a buzzing sensation of too much feedback sent forth paralyzing signals as he suddenly gasped, the heat of Extremis on his metal arm too much for his neuro-sensors to take- And suddenly found himself thrown across the rooftop, his hold broken by his weakening metal arm, the open air around him before he felt himself dropping and twisted to see forty-one stories of bleak concrete and grassy ground rushing up at him-

And just as suddenly his momentum downward was arrested by the jarring pull of his right arm. He grunted and automatically clenched his hand in the one that grabbed at his own. He dangled the few stories he had fallen, his body limply slamming into the side with some pain. By his estimates, it was about the thirty-sixth floor as glass tinkled and fell the full length. They crashed into the ground with a distant soft noise and he looked up to see the target- to see Rogers' strained grimacing smile staring back down at him, having caught him as he had fallen.

Blood was welling down his knuckles and fell onto his own hand, but Rogers dared not readjust his grip for the fear of making his own hand slick with it. “Gotcha, I gotcha...” Rogers grunted a little as he shifted his weight a little. Half of his body was hanging outside and this close, he could see the numerous wounds, burns, and blood that splattered his once pristine red-white-blue uniform. He blinked once, as Rogers laughed a little weakly, minutely readjusting his grip. “Geez Bucky, stop eating so much, you're gained weight...”

“ _ Don't do anything stupid before I get back...” he spread his hands out, crooked smile on his face. _

_Steve rolled his eyes, an equally crooked grin on his face, “How could I? You're taking all of the stupid with you.”_

“It's all the stupid I took with me,” the words fell out of his mouth before he could stop them, but they sounded so familiar, and the resulting pain that bloomed in the back of his head hurt so much that he  _ knew _ it was the right thing to say.

And it was the right thing to say because the name  _ James _ settled in his head like it fit and belonged in the first of very many scattered puzzle pieces. He looked up to see unshed tears in the target's- no, in Captain Ameri-, no, in  _ Steve Rogers' _ eyes and the same wide, crooked smile that he  _ knew _ was from his memories. And something in him warmed a little, like the same kind of warmth he felt while watching the news at the airport; a little like pride.

* * *

Nothing, not even the pain of stitches and gauze pads coming in contact with the burns, scrapes, and cuts he had received could keep the small smile off of Steve's face as Bruce finished patching him up. He knew there had been a breakthrough of sorts with Bucky, but also knew that there was still a long way to go, especially given the wary, hesitant look that he had received after pulling Bucky into the building. He could still see the Winter Soldier, the wariness, the eyes that still shouted at him to not let his guard down, but at the same time, he could see  _ Bucky _ lurking underneath, as if he was starting to awaken from a very long deep slumber and could not quite get his bearings.

For the first time since he had found Bucky, his best friend had responded in kind. Not by rote or stilted words that seemed like it was from a foggy memory, but a clear-cut response that only  _ Bucky _ would have answered. The drawl, faint accent, and world-weary wryness that was his best friend.

“Well, your uniform's shredded,” Bruce handed him a loose fitting cotton tee-shirt and he gingerly put it on, mindful of the stitches and pads of gauze all over him.

“Gave it up for a good cause,” he absently replied as he tucked the edges of the tee-shirt into the the slightly looser jeans he had worn to account for the injuries on the lower half of his body. He nodded his thanks as Bruce handed over his familiar and favorite leather jacket and put it on, wincing a little at the stretch of his bruised ribs. Thankfully, they were only bruised and Bruce said that he would be able to breathe properly in a few short hours. His other wounds would take longer, especially the burns he had received from barely avoiding the worst of the Extremis blast. “Hill wants us upstairs?”

“Yeah,” Bruce crumpled up the gloves he had been using as he sutured the wounds and tossed it into a trashcan before absently grabbing a protein bar and unwrapped it, finishing it off in two quick bites. He himself had changed into different clothes after they had all returned to the Tower by way of quinjet, leaving most of the cleanup to NYPD, FNY, and the National Guard. While Steve had been trying to reach Bucky, the Hulk and Maria had successfully distracted the Centipede soldiers enough for the National Guard reinforcements to force the remaining ones to surrender. Surprisingly, seeing that everything was under control, the Hulk had sat down on the concrete steps and reverted back to Bruce without any major fuss – the first time anyone had seen the Hulk willingly give control back to Bruce Banner.

Steve had managed to pull Bucky in after adjusting his grip and after Bucky managed to get his arm to work again by grappling the side of the building and giving him enough leverage to pull himself upwards. The two of them had stared at each other, wary, cautious, acutely aware that  _ something _ was different, but also aware that Steve was still considered a target and could not let his guard down.

Natasha had broken the moment by running down to them, speaking in rapid Russian which somehow calmed Bucky down enough for him to take a few steps back before turning to Steve and had said that Rumlow was finally disabled after an application of Widow's Bite and several doses of I-CER in the Widow's Bite. Steve had not known that the former commander of STRIKE Team Delta had been alive – but had been a little more surprised to see Natasha after all this time. They had not had a chance to talk much as SWAT made their presence known and Natasha had directed them to secure Rumlow and whatever was left of his team with strict instructions on keeping Rumlow down.

A quinjet had then picked them up, sent by Sharon who reported to all of them that Coulson called, saying they had lost contact with Tony and Sam about the same time the Extremis guard had blown up the field hearing. There had also been an attack on the hidden bunker in London, but Thor and Coulson's team had beaten them back and they had captured a couple of Centipede agents and were going to question them.

“Got a couple of those?” he asked as Bruce rounded the table to leave the lab with him and the scientist nodded, reaching over to an unassuming looking container and pulled out a few silver-wrapped unmarked bars and handed it to him.

“They're a special blend of proteins, carbs, and other good stuff to refuel after the Other Guy lets me get back to normal. I've managed to make it not taste like the cardboard stuff you get in the stores, but it's good for recovering super soldiers,” Bruce grinned, unrolling his sleeves as they walked out and headed to the elevator that promptly took them up to the main living room of penthouse floor.

They exited, Steve absently nibbling on the edges of the protein bar and finding it to his liking – Bruce was right, there was enough chocolate flavoring in it to  _ not _ taste like cardboard – as the elevator next to them dinged the arrival of Maria and Sharon as they walked out. He looked towards the living room to see that Bucky was still seated in the corner couch he had taken as soon as they had landed, but a slightly bloodied damp cloth was resting on one of the arm rests and he looked a little less dirt and blood covered. Natasha was nowhere in sight until she rounded the kitchenette, holding a hot mug of what smelled like peppermint tea.

“Good, you're all here,” Maria said without preamble as Sharon stood behind her, hands clasped behind her and very remincent of a second-in-command position judging by her posture. Steve supposed that it could be construed as a way, that Sharon, still under the CIA's watch was regulated to effectively being Maria's second-in-command. “Coulson's sending out two teams to search for Tony and Sam's last reported location, so we will know in a couple of hours if they find anything.”

“Any ransom demands?” Steve asked. The first thing they had all learned after the Avengers had formed was that Tony tended to get a lot of threats and demands, most of them harmless, some of them not...case in point, AIM and Aldrich Killian.

“None, which leads me to my second point,” Maria shook her head, “we thought it was HYDRA who was after you, Sergeant Barnes, a ruse to keep us off kilter and draw you back here, but not only was it that, HYDRA seems to be after all of the Avengers.”

“Attacking London and Tony and Sam,” Bruce murmured, “where the hell did they get that much resources?”

“Distribution of threat assessments,” Natasha answered from where she was perched on the armrest of a couch, sipping her tea, “the bulk of the attack was focused on Steve and also New York because of the Hulk. But they sent Rumlow to deal with the Winter Soldier because they had upgraded him with some Extremis variant that's linked to Project Tahiti.”

“Tahiti?” Maria looked surprised before narrowing her eyes at Natasha, “and why...?”

“I was on my way back to tell you in person before heading to London to ask Phil about it,” Natasha shrugged as if it was not that relevant, but Steve thought he was missing an important piece of some puzzle he did not exactly want to know, but at the same time wanted to know. “Deep cover.”

Suddenly Steve understood where she had gone for the past year since SHIELD had fallen. She had said that she needed to craft a new identity, but at the same time she had also taken a very deep cover mission somewhere and had to break it to relay the information in person which meant transmitting it was too much of a risk. He looked at her for a moment and wanted to tell her that she did not need to take risks anymore, but realized he could not say those words – not with what he knew about her, even the very little that she had revealed to him for the past three years. He had no right.

“Understood,” Maria only nodded once before gesturing for her to continue her assessment.

“London was also attacked, but at the moment I think it was probably just an assessment of defenses and also to try to provoke Phil into doing something rash. The best chance of getting an Avenger was to attack Stark and Wilson when they were the most vulnerable, thirty-thousand feet in the air.”

“How do you know all of this?” Sharon spoke up, confused.

“Because they had been planning it since the Winter Soldier walked right into the Washington D.C. vault,” Natasha threw a sidelong glance at Bucky who was sitting silently, staring at all of them with unreadable eyes. “It's Red Room protocol 101. They want him, but they'll settle for grabbing any Avenger to force a domino effect.” The corner of her lips twitched into a grimacing smile, “You tried to disrupt that effect as soon as you scanned yourself into the vault. You knew that there was a time limit and you could have succeeded if you just got onto that plane, but-”

Bucky's voice rasped as he spoke something in Russian and Natasha nodded, the grimacing smile on her face.

“That's right, human error,” she shook her head, “gets to all of us in the end...”

Steve shook his head, “The fact that whether or not you got onto that plane Bucky doesn't exclude the fact that HYDRA might have taken Tony or Sam. It's not your fault or anything to do with the Red Room. We've angered HYDRA enough that we were all targets.”

“Cap's right,” Sharon suddenly spoke up, her voice small and everyone looked at her, “I...when my handlers debriefed me about what happened in D.C., I told them about the Avengers arriving, but they kept asking if the Hulk was there or when he showed up if he wasn't there in the beginning. I think...maybe they started to piece together that you were living here, Dr. Banner, after my debrief, and that probably alerted HYDRA to do what they did... I'm sorry...”

“Or circumstantial evidence,” Bruce replied lightly, “I'm more inclined to think that Ross took the shot he wanted and scored. HYDRA was probably just riding his coattails since he's always been a bit careless.”

Steve nodded in agreement. The blame for what happened was too circumstantial, and they could not wallow in it, not with Tony and Sam missing. He knew that Tony had the Iron Man suit, but Sam was in a more vulnerable position that high up in the air. There was literally no air to breathe in and Sam only had the EXO-Falcon flight harness. If HYDRA did attack then Tony would have had a very hard time making sure Sam did not die of hypoxia and also to defend himself. “The main point is that Tony and Sam are missing and Strucker is still out there,” he glanced at Bucky, but his best friend did not move an inch or give any indication to the name.

“Strucker?” Natasha asked, setting her mug down. “Baron Wolfgang von Strucker?”

“Red Room?” Maria interjected and Natasha grimaced a little.

“Black Widow Project subdivision of the Red Room,” she replied before turning her head to look at Bucky who had a more visible reaction as he pinched the bridge of his nose with his metal hand. Natasha quickly said something in Russian and there was a very halting reply before Bucky looked up and stared at her. There was something different in his eyes, almost soft.

“ _ Natalia? _ ” Steve knew some very basic Russian to know that Natasha's name was a diminutive form and that her name spoken by the computerized Armin Zola was Natalia Alianova Romanova. But to hear Bucky say it...

There was the ghost of a smile on Natasha's face as she nodded once. “ _ Yasha _ ,” she said quietly before turning to the rest of them, “where's Strucker?”

“London,” Maria's expression was professionally blank, but Steve could not help but wonder if Maria was thinking about the early days of Natasha's involvement with SHIELD, of trying very hard to not assassinate Fury. “Stark and Wilson were headed there to bring the media firestorm on Strucker and force him to cough up his secrets.”

“London it is then,” there was something dangerous in Natasha's expression, one that promised a slow drawn out torturous death and surprisingly Steve found himself agreeing with her sentiments. With the confirmation of Strucker being involved in the Red Room and by proxy, involved somehow with Bucky – even if his friend's adverse reaction to Strucker's sketch a day earlier – Steve knew that they had to head to London. If not for Bucky's sake, but definitely for Tony and Sam's sake. He would never leave his friends in HYDRA's hands.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

[continues to cackle like a loon]

 


	15. Chapter 15

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 15_

 

“The Winter Soldier has Red Room programming,” Maria's statement was just that, but Natasha heard the underlying accusation laced in her words. The unspoken question directed at her, the answers that she demanded, but did not voice and she nodded once, making an adjustment to the the instrument panel in the gunner seat to the right of Maria. Natasha knew that Maria had been one of the first SHIELD personnel flight-qualified for the quinjet when it rolled off of the production assembly line a few years ago; a brief stint as a helo pilot before she was recruited into SHIELD. Flying was one of the very few things she had allowed herself the luxury to enjoy even after making her way up the ranks from STRIKE Alpha leader to Fury's second-in-command.

“He trained me,” Natasha answered simply and out of the corner of her eye, saw the minutest of twitches from Maria as she kept her gaze forward. She knew Maria was asking for more, having not even missed the significance of the Russian that passed between her and the Winter Soldier, especially their names for each other. Bruce and Sharon looked confused, but Steve had looked like he was perhaps starting to piece together a puzzle with the pieces he did not know he had. Maria had all but been livid behind her professionally stoic expression – it was all in her eyes, Natasha learned that from the very beginning when she first tangled with her after her programming kicked in to take out Fury.

“Does Clint know this?” she asked, her eyes flicking down to her instrument panels as she made a small adjustment on the yoke.

“He knew I was trained by a man named Yasha,” Natasha replied and after a few seconds of silence added, “I had forgotten that Yasha was the Winter Soldier until I got shot on the causeway.”

“They wiped you?” Maria never minced her words and it was one of the few things that made Natasha respect her. It was blunt and perhaps someone would way callous, but Maria still thought of her duties to be Fury's bodyguard – even though she technically was not STRIKE Alpha's commander anymore – to be the highest responsibility.

“You already know my records technically exist starting in 1984. I was the only survivor of the Black Widow program, the only survivor of cryogenics technology that could not even keep a brain alive after the body had perished,” she shrugged, “what is it to say that my previous handlers did not wipe who I was before I surrendered in Sao Paulo to Agent Barton?”

“You brought the cryogenesis tech to us after a raid, and it didn't work,” Maria pointed out, “how come it worked for HYDRA and the Winter Soldier?”

Natasha sighed quietly and smiled bitterly as she stared out at the endless horizon of blue water and patchy white clouds. She let the question hang for a few minutes before abruptly saying, “I was supposed to have died, you know?”

“Pardon?”

“Maybe when the Hulk smashed me into parts of the Helicarrier...maybe when I inhaled Jormungandr's poison...” there were other near misses, close calls, all brushed off as broken bones and a strong constitution for the most part, but Natasha knew better. She knew the limits on her body, had them tested when she was in the Red Room, fighting all the other little girls of the Black Widow program, trying to survive. Though many of her memories from that day were hazy, she did remember some of the little girls unceremoniously killed during training exercises, even though a part of her had not understood the gravity of the situation. They had all learned death from a very young age. Death and the meaning to survive at any cost, to betray and to kill because they would be the next victims. They learned how to seduce, how to play like the very namesake they were only to strike in the end because they sensed death.

Silence reigned in wake of her words before she answered Maria's previous question, “Maybe HYDRA knew about the cryo-tech I gave you...”

Maria snorted quietly, having long come to the same conclusion when she had asked. “HYDRA created the Red Room then?”

“Probably, though discreetly with the Kremlin's help,” Natasha shrugged. She knew that the Black Widow program under the Red Room was wholly Russian, but it made sense that HYDRA had secretly funded part of it. It certainly made more sense when it came to terms about how Yasha, or rather James Buchanan Barnes could easily speak Russian without an accent and at the same time be typically American. He proved that HYDRA was playing both side of the Cold War.

“The Winter Soldier trained you,” Maria echoed her earlier statement and she glanced at the sharp-nosed woman to see the underlying myriad of emotions that ran from the gamut of anger to disappointment, and everything in between. She easily read Maria's emotions, even though she did not exactly show it, having worked with her for a very long time.

“ _ Yasha _ trained me,” she decided to throw a bone to her and saw her visibly twitch in her seat.

“Yasha.”

“He taught me how to survive,” she conceded before adding a bit defensively, “though I guess how not to survive bleeding out on the causeway.”

Maria nodded once, accepting her words, but did not apologize. “When?”

“Did I know?” she asked and the other woman nodded, “when I saw him fight Steve. It never occurred to me that the Smithsonian's display of James Barnes was also Yasha. People have similar features and faces all the time. I only knew because it was like someone was stabbing knives into my eyes, like a damn breaking and then the flood of remembering something that I should not have forgotten, something that I needed to cling on to but couldn't because it was ripped away from me.” She glanced over again, “But you knew, didn't you? You saw the signs while we were being taken to our execution spot. That's why you said I needed to see Fury, right?”

Maria thinned her lips and smiled grimly, “I had to check, Romanov...had to make sure.”

Natasha smiled tightly, “At least you're one of the few who hasn't forgotten after all these years.”

“Barton's sure as hell forgot it-”

“Clint...Clint hasn't forgotten...he just...hides it better. And don't blame Nick. He might have gotten a bit complacent over the years, but that's probably why he's got contingent plans all over the place,” she glanced back at the door that separated the cockpit from the rest of the quinjet, “it's like the beginning all over again, isn't it? Except it's with Steve...”

“...Yeah...” Maria replied, her voice rough, “fucking Red Room.”

Natasha laughed lightly, “Never once to mince words, Agent Hill.”

“Damn straight,” she flicked a few switches, “Go back there and keep an eye on your ex-whatever and give Steve a chance to sleep. Cap looked like he was about to fall on his feet. We found video logs of what's been done to Sergeant Barnes and he's not slept a wink for a while.”

“Yes ma'am,” Natasha grinned, unbuckling her seat and getting up to show that she was about to do it even without Maria's mock orders. Before she left, she turned and touched Maria's shoulder, “...thanks, Maria.”

“The warning still stands, Romanov. You harm Fury in any way, I'll hunt you down until the ends of the Earth, with or without Barton by your side,” Maria turned to look at her and she nodded, affirming the vow that she knew Maria had made long ago when they brought in Natalia Alianova Romanova in from the cold of the Red Room – the Black Widow.

* * *

Steve wanted to sleep, but dared not to, not with Bucky sitting across from him in the jumpseat in the quinjet. Granted, Bucky's eyes were closed in a facsimile of sleep or restfulness, but he did not want to test whether or not his best friend's command to kill him would kick in again if he closed his eyes. There was no need to endanger Maria or Natasha with his own foolish selfishness and he himself had no inclination to take another dive into the cold waters of the Atlantic or Arctic Ocean at this point, judging by how fast they were traveling.

Instead, he focused on Bucky, looking him over with a critical eye of both a friend and the remnants of his commanding officer. From a tactical standpoint, Bucky looked ready to go, having grudgingly accepted something of a patch-up by Bruce after they had decided to head to London. What surprised them was after Bruce had finished wrapping up the burns Bucky had received from Rumlow – or rather now, Crossbones by Natasha's intel – Bruce had said that he was not going with them to London and was staying in New York. He said that he wanted to keep a lower profile, and did not want to needlessly endanger others with his presence if he could help it.

Steve wanted to object and say that Bruce was part of the Avengers and counted him as one of them, but had caught the look Bruce wore and his protests died on his lips. He could not push Bruce to come with them, especially with all that he had done. Bruce had suggested that he stay with Sharon at the Tower and continue his research into whatever Red Room programming Bucky had in him. Natasha had promised to look over the files they had gotten in Washington D.C. as they flew to London and get back to him.

Before they had left, they had notified Pepper of Tony and Sam's disappearance and also alerted Colonel Rhodes of the situation to which War Machine – Steve had taken the Iron Patriot moniker as a joke, much like Tony did – replied that he would watch out for Pepper as best as he could while being discreet. Rhodes had also said that Pepper could easily defend herself, but did not offer any other explanation saying that it was not his place to tell and that when they found Tony, to punch him in the face for him for that. Once they were in the air, they maintained radio silence and stealth for the three hour trip to London – the quinjet flying as fast if not much faster than a Concorde without the drawbacks of sonic booms. The stealth capabilities of their quinjet slowed them down a little to minimize radar pings and profile from satellite handshakes, but it was still very fast. Coulson had reported that the two teams he had sent out would file a report on what they had found of Stark's private jet before they were scheduled to land.

He rubbed his eye to rid himself of a phantom itch as he studied Bucky. His friend was ready, tactically, dressed in a kevlar tactical vest found in Tony's workshop – apparently Bruce had presented it to Bucky, saying that Tony wanted him to have it – and Steve saw two visible handles of knives sitting snugly on either side of him on his belt. He suspected that there were probably more knives upon Bucky, but they were not visible. There was no indication of guns upon him, but Steve did not miss the rectangular medium-sized hardcase in the backpack that Bucky carried with him onto the quinjet. He suspected it was probably the sniper rifle he had found in the vault. His friend looked ready to jump into a fight again, but the commanding officer in Steve also noted the signs of exhaustion.

Dark circles lined Bucky's eyes, and even though he was quiet for the most part whenever Steve was around, he could not help but notice that there was a sense of even deeper quiet in recent days. He wondered if Bucky had even slept since he had arrived at the Tower. The others did not say anything and he had not asked JARVIS about Bucky's status, but he hoped that his friend was sleeping, if not micro-sleeping. Back in the days of the war, Bucky had been the Commandos' scout and sniper, watching their backs after making sure their front was clear. It was double-duty, but Bucky had proved he was the only one of the Commandos to not even be heard during a training exercise. Even Steve had almost been ambushed during that exercise, and only managed to evade his friend because he knew which way he was going to launch his surprise attack. When Bucky slept doing double-duty had puzzled Steve, but his friend had said that he had learned how to take micro-naps – not the most refreshing way to sleep, but enough for him to get through a mission that required his skill set before they returned to base.

From a friend-to-friend standpoint, Bucky looked like a wreck.

It was clear that Bucky had only allowed Bruce to treat whatever wounds he had received with minimal care, perhaps still too wary as the Winter Soldier to allow any further maintenance without putting Bruce at risk to turn into the Hulk once more. Steve did not want to think of the alternative – that Bucky felt like the wounds he had were a twisted deserved punishment. The fact that thought crossed Steve's mind had saddened him, but it stood to reason why he knew he had that thought. He hoped that perhaps Thor would be amenable to a conversation and some guidance to help stubborn brothers who thought they could take on the problems of their world without involving others.

Even though he knew Bucky had approached them for help, the fact that he had left and that Steve reluctantly gave up the chance to go after him after volunteering himself to Ross and the panel; Steve knew his friend enough that he would ask for help, but if only there were no other options. Bucky had not asked for help after they had escaped Schmidt's labs, had stubbornly joined up with the Commandos and brushed off offers to be honorably discharged and returned stateside because of wounds sustained, had basically plowed through his experiences with naught a complaint. Steve had kept a strict eye on Bucky in the months afterward as did the other Commandos, but it seemed like his friend was slowly coming to terms or perhaps burying it so that it did not worry any of them.

But then again, Steve knew he was as guilty of the same type of stubbornness as Bucky was – they both learned it from each other in the very early days of childhood and mutual hatred of bullies. Steve learned it by being a loner and drawing the ire of those who thought he was an easy target; Bucky learned it from being a sympathetic heart who could not stand to see bullies beat up a young scrawny little kid.

Steve sighed inwardly as he rubbed an absent eye, shifting in the slightly uncomfortable jumpseat. The quinjet was not designed for creature comforts, more like a helo, but it was not all hardbacks and stiff seats. His own wounds were part of the problem, but the pain was fading, little by little. The energy bar that Bruce had given to him had already been consumed before they had even boarded and Steve had wanted to give a couple to Bucky, but did not exactly know how without either provoking him or having him ignore it. He did not miss the times in which he had tried to cook foodstuffs for his best friend that he would not even touch it while he was there. He had asked JARVIS if Bucky ate, and the A.I. had said that Bucky did eventually eat the food cooked for him, but the fact that he did not eat while Steve was there bothered him a little.

When he had made the decision to go after Bucky and bring him home, Sam had cautioned that as both a war veteran and amnesiac, it would be a long hard road. During one of their morning runs after the bank vault in D.C., Sam had reiterated that patience was key and what Bucky did had to be accepted with a very healthy dose of patience. Recovery was not automatic and breakthroughs were few and far in between. Steve knew that a breakthrough had happened when Bucky had  _ answered _ hanging thirty-six stories above, and had steeled himself, repeating Sam's advice to himself, but he also wanted to let Bucky  _ know _ that he was there for him. He did not want to smother him, but at the same time wanted to let him know that he was free to leave – even though Steve would chase after him – whenever he wanted.

He scrubbed at his face roughly, trying to clear sleep away. The sounds of the cockpit door opening made Steve stop mid-scrub as looked up to see Natasha stepping through. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bucky immediately open his eyes, tensing even as he eyed her without looking directly at her.

“Natasha?” he blinked as she left the door partially open.

“Maria wants a sit rep on the files you found in D.C.,” Natasha said and Steve blinked, standing up, grabbing a hand hold as the quinjet dipped a little, adjusting its flight pattern.

“Oh, okay,” he replied as he made his way to the cockpit. Pausing for a moment, he fished out the two uneaten nutrition bars he had in his bomber jacket and placed them in the seat next to where Bucky was sitting, noting his best friend eying both his hand and what he had placed on the seat. “Here, they're protein bars, according to Bruce -er, Dr. Banner, good for super soldiers.”

He turned away before he could see Bucky's cold expression any further and squeezed past the cockpit door, closing it behind him.

“Captain,” Hill greeted loudly from where she sat in the pilot's seat. She made a few adjustments on her instrument panels as he slid into the seat that Natasha had vacated and placed the headset on his ears, lowering the microphone in order to talk to her without raising his voice.

“You know, the last time I was in the cockpit, it kind of went down, oh...about over there maybe?” he gestured vaguely to her left out of the window and gave a hesitant smile as his joke fell a little flat.

“It's a good thing then that I'm piloting,” she replied congenially before glancing at him with a critical gaze. “Get some sleep Cap-”

“But I thought you wanted to know what's in the video files-”

“I don't need to know what I already know from first hand experience,” Maria tilted her head a little and Steve realized to his chagrin that it was true.

“Oh...” he said quietly before making a move to get up, puzzled as to why he had been summoned to the cockpit before Maria reached out with a free hand and stopped him.

“Steve, get some sleep. We're a little over two hours out, but you can do at least one REM cycle before we get there, okay?” she said and Steve smiled at her, settling back into the gunner seat.

“You sure-”

“Sleep, now, soldier,” she said and he nodded, feeling sheepish and grateful at the same time that Natasha had given him the opportunity to sleep without Bucky coming after him – at least the semblance of it. He knew that if Bucky's programming kicked in, not even the flimsy metal door of the quinjet would separate him from his target.

“Yes ma'am,” he replied before shifting a bit so that he was more comfortable in the seat and folded his arms across his chest. He glanced out at the endless blue horizon for a moment before finally closing his eyes. Even before he began the thought of waking up in freezing Arctic cold once more, he was already asleep.

* * *

The memories of the Winter Soldier were sharp and clear in Natasha's mind; their twice encounter with each other.

The first time she had met the Winter Soldier was through a bullet that cut through her and killed the nuclear physicist she was escorting into protective custody. She remembered bleeding out on the pavement, remember seeing the glint of metal arm against the too-bright sun, the bright red star and the stance of a sniper who had finished his mission. Then she remembered Clint and Coulson, talking to her, Coulson's voice a low continuous murmur of reassurances while Clint's was a little more frantic, barking orders, keeping a heavy painful hand on her bleeding stomach. She had passed out shortly afterward and awakened in the medical ward of the Hong Kong branch of SHIELD.

The second time she had met the Winter Soldier was a little over a year ago on the causeway in Washington D.C. She had another bullet in her courtesy of the Winter Soldier and was again, bleeding out, but it had been Steve who had effectively stopped the Soldier from his side mission of killing her. It was also then that she had felt the long-absent searing pain in her mind, something she had not wholly forgotten because most of her programming had been purged or re-purposed, but it had unlocked the torrent of memories of the days that she had not known she had lost when she trained in the Black Widow program.

Then, there were the memories of Yasha.

Before that fateful day on the causeway, Yasha had always been the image and shadow of a man in her mind. She had always known that Yasha had been a primary trainer, had taught her the skills to survive. She had other primary trainers who taught her the skills to seduce, interrogate, and spywork, but it was Yasha who was her primary trainer in methods of assassination and of the art of killing. She had vaguely remembered the lessons Yasha taught, but also of one briefly shadowed moment that always slipped through her fingers whenever she had thought too hard. The only image she glimpsed was of her staring coyly above Yasha in a bed both of them aflame with desire. However, if she thought too hard on it, the memory always slipped from her and left her with a headache that took days to go away. She had always vaguely wondered if Yasha had taught her more than just the art of killing.

Then there was the causeway a year ago.

She  _ remembered _ , through the haze of pain of bleeding out in the back of the SHIELD truck, through the haze of getting patched up by Fury's doctor in the safehouse. Through all of it, she remembered and realized who Yasha was – trainer, killer, a brief rare moment of comfort – and who the Winter Soldier was...and how HYDRA had deceived them all. She had heard the quiet intense argument outside the safehouse between Steve and Sam, the latter of the two suggesting that perhaps the man Steve once knew as Bucky Barnes was not a man to save, but a man to stop. She had heard the naked pain, the unabashed hopefulness in Steve's response, that he wanted to save him because he could not before and would not fail his best friend again. She had privately agreed with Sam's sentiment; that if Yasha and the Winter Soldier were one, and that the memories that had unlocked after all these years were true, then there was no stopping him once he was assigned his mission.

But she did not know. She had thought she had purged or at least re-purposed all of the programming the Red Room had done to her, had operated for so long without the constant thrum of pain, had been able to successfully transition between targeting Fury to protecting him in her own way. And in her haze of swimming through these new memories, had to put aside everything that tangled the Winter Soldier up with  _ Yasha _ . She had seen the unanswered questions in Maria's gaze as they had prepared for their assault on the Triskelion, but could not and would not answer those questions.

In the aftermath, she had gathered her courage and had asked her contacts in Kiev for everything about the Winter Soldier, about  _ Yasha _ except all but name. She had handed Steve the folder without her own notes and memories of Yasha and disappeared.

And now, Yasha, the Winter Soldier, James Buchanan Barnes, Bucky, the man that had trained her in the art of assassination sat a few feet away, staring at her with the same intense blue-eyed gaze she  _ remembered _ . She let him assess her, wondering what he remembered in the brief moments that they had talked on the rooftop fighting Rumlow; after Steve had caught him and pulled him in, and even during the briefing before they had decided to go to London. Her own experience with the wiping of memories was neglible compared to what he had been through, but she still knew it was a jarring sensation, the flashing of double-images over eyes that should have been able to concentrate clearly. The pain was primary, but it was the sensation of seeing something that was not quite there, but at the same time hanging there, tangible and terrifying in all of its ugly glory.

“Black...Widow,” he sounded hesitant as he finished his assessment and focused on her face. “ _ I broke the necks of an auburn-haired girl... _ ” he murmured in Russian and she nodded.

“ _ Anya _ ,” she knew what he was talking about, the shared memory stark in her mind. “ _ She had not performed adequately and they wanted to send a message to us. We had not understood what it meant that you were our trainer and Anya had looked to you like an older brother _ ,” she replied in Russian as he nodded absently, rubbing his eyebrow.

“ _ It...was not the first time... _ ” he squeezed his eyes shut briefly before opening them again, staring at her with some confusion.

“ _ Katerina used her training on her handlers and you eliminated them because they were incompetent. What she did not share was that she was pregnant with child from that. Continued training with you eliminated it, but was toxic to her body and she died _ ,” Natasha saw him blink once slowly, accepting the news with his customary coldness as Yasha, but at the same time saw the spark of regret in his eyes that was clearly  _ not _ Yasha.

“ _ There...were others...? _ ” he asked and she nodded once.

“ _ They were eliminated _ ,” she said in a simple tone and saw his gaze sharpen a little as he realized just  _ who _ had eliminated the others of the Black Widow Program.

He fell silent in wake of her words, clearly thinking or remembering something before speaking up again. “ _ Natalia Romanova _ ,” he murmured mostly to himself, “ _ you...the program...the file I had been given said 1984... _ ”

The corner of Natasha's lips quirked up in a crooked smile, “ _ Records can be changed, history remade with a few simple lines _ .”

He frowned at her, rubbing his temples in a circle, “ _ Programming _ .” It was both a literal and metaphorical answer; programming of computer code to change files, and the programming in their minds by said computer code or otherwise.

She nodded, “ _ You were the first, at least the stories told by our handlers in moments of weakness, moments where they spoke out of turn. Yasha was the first successful result. They did not say where. We assumed Russian, but assumptions always lead to false errors and misinformation. _ ” She let her smile turn a little bitter at the horrifying realization that she had not escaped the Red Room when she defected to SHIELD, she just thought she had.

He looked at her, his cold blue eyes asking the unspoken question,  _ And you? _ She only stared at him, her gaze frank, “ _ I was the only survivor _ .”

There was a more visible reaction as he winced and she thought she felt the phantom pain of something stabbing in her mind, watching his reaction to a jarring memory. He grimaced and a very quiet grunt issued from his lips as he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, forcing himself to lift his head and rest it against the jumpseat's headrest, breathing heavily through his nose. After a long moment, he opened his eyes again and dropped his head to look at her. There was some mild surprise in his gaze as he stared at her again. “ _ You had a chance... _ ”

“ _ I did _ ,” she agreed and left it at that. She knew that he was asking why she did not attack him, why did she not do what she was trained to do, eliminate the threat which he was clearly one. Any other person would have offered an explanation, but Natasha watched him pull the pieces together, put together whatever fragments he knew, whatever he remembered about her, about everything and try to fit the giant jagged edges together, to build himself up bit by bit. It was the same technique that Clint had used on her when he had first brought her in, the same one he kept persisting each time they were out in the field, Red Room hunting or otherwise. It was the same one that she had used on him when he had come out from under Loki's mind control. Sometimes explanations were too frivolous, too unnecessary. Sometimes, you had to let the person slowly work things out, to understand why without an explanation that could easily be twisted in whatever was going on in their head.

Sometimes though, the results were twisted within that person's head, but Natasha knew from experience that repeated patience and letting actions speak for themselves helped. Clint had proven it to her time and time again. Phil had proven it to her time and time again. Even Maria had proven it more than once and it helped her overcome her own programming – though she still blamed Fury for the most part for all of the stupid stunts he pulled. But in his own way, Fury's stunts helped her cope, analyze, and move on.

“ _ Not the only survivor, _ ” he made to pinch the bridge of his nose, but aborted the movement, “ _ there...were others...not Widow...a...family? Something about...burning home...a well... _ ”

Natasha's eyebrows rose at that news. There were rumors abound about where certain SHIELD agents came from – herself being the case and constant innocuous questioning of Clint by his fellow co-workers was proof of that. Other agents were also questioned in a friendly manner, like co-worker bantering, but there had always been a question that Natasha had about the recruit Agent John Garrett had brought in, at a juvenile center of all places. Granted, SHIELD had access to records and actively recruited whenever an opportunity presented itself; case-in-point, Phil recruiting Thor for the Avengers Initiative or even Jasper Sitwell with Benny and Claire. But something had never settled right with Agent Garrett's recruit.

He was well-trained by the time he officially joined SHIELD, and further improved under their probation and training courses. Natasha knew that she held the highest scores in espionage across SHIELD and attributed it to the Red Room skills and programming; not even Clint could come close to her score and he was second on the leaderboards until Garrett's recruit showed up and knocked Clint down to third place. Everyone was readily impressed, even Fury, and Clint had spent weeks complaining about it, but Fury had secretly tasked her to find out about the recruit's background.

She came back with the story of how he had been raised in an abusive home, two brothers, an older one and younger one. The younger one had died in the well and the recruit had been ordered by his older brother, upon horrific pain, to not rescue his younger brother. He had run away then, only to return and torch the place to the ground. Several bodies had been found, utterly charred that not even dental records could identify them. When the recruit had been arrested, he had been found sitting at the end of the driveway, clearly covered in some of the flammable chemicals that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he had torched his home and killed his family who were having a get-together of sorts with what authorities assumed was extended family.

The trail had led to a dead end, even with her personal visit to the charred remains of the home. Her only clue was the body of a young boy, just barely beginning puberty, at the bottom of the well. It was clear that he had starved to death and she had only taken a small tissue sample before giving it to Fury to run tests on. Whatever the result was, she did not know, but she had learned that Fury had pulled Garrett's recruit from active field duty to be part of Coulson's team. Now, Natasha wondered if Fury had known all along about Garrett's recruit being a proto-Red Room recruit, but perhaps did not know that Agent Garrett was HYDRA and that his recruit was more loyal to him than to Phil's team or SHIELD.

Either way, Grant Ward was under lock and key and more so, under Phil's very careful and watchful gaze.

“ _ HYDRA's next step was more than likely to entice home grown terrorism _ ,” she answered him, “ _ but for your purposes, it would have been training Widows all over again _ .” After September 11 th , HYDRA must have sensed an opportunity to restart the Black Widow program and Red Room, but instead of the aim of producing spies and assassins, it was to produce home grown terrorist, further cementing the world's need for constant surveillance and security. After all, a country was rather ignorant that all of its citizens were happy and prosperous and thought that terrorists were those who blamed infidels and jihadists. No one would have suspected that one of their own could shoot up a school, kill children, or even commit acts of treason. And then when the impossible happened, outrage and blame throwing happened while people debated how they could keep watch so that a tragedy would not happen again.

She suspected that HYDRA had released the Winter Soldier from ice to specifically train children to both infiltrate the highest paramilitary organizations like SHIELD, to perhaps even eventually corrupt another organization like MI6 or even INTERPOL. His skills at blending in, even with his ostentatious metal arm, were legendary, that was why he was considered a ghost in most intelligence organizations. The thought that Grant Ward could have been trained to infiltrate SHIELD with the eventuality of killing her because of her visible status as the Black Widow, crossed Natasha's mind, but she was no stranger to death threats and assassins.

She watched as he nodded once to her statement, falling silent once more for a few minutes. He shifted a little in his seat and cleared his throat quietly before speaking in English, “Agent Hill said you were Red Room.”

Natasha let the statement hang in the air for a few seconds, asking him in silence if it was the question he wanted answered before glimpsing the barest of nods from him. She pursed her lips a little and squared her shoulders. “Colonel Nicholas J. Fury was my target,” she answered.

Something passed in his expression, a mix of her  _ Yasha _ and not-Yasha, perhaps a ghost of Steve's Bucky Barnes, along with the tightness of the Winter Soldier as he digested the information. “Three shots...” he started haltingly, his cold blue eyes taking a far away look, “the light gave me enough to work with. The target-no...Rogers... _ idiot turned on the light _ .  _ Why did you do that, you stupid idiot, you gave me a shot _ ...” His words devolved into some muttered Russian swears as he closed his eyes and scrubbed his face roughly before looking up at her again.

“It will not be easy,” she knew what he was asking underneath it all and gestured lightly towards him with a hand, “it will hurt. You have made it this far, why not go further?” She saw him flinch a little, more than likely remembering what had happened since he had arrived at the Avengers Tower. She had not gotten the full story of recent events from Maria, but had gotten enough to understand the general gist of it and grasp what he was going through. It was not exactly de-programming, no, that stayed with her since they had put it into her mind, wrapped it around her and nearly destroyed her with it. “I refuse to let it destroy me, control me, define me. I embraced the pain and let  _ that _ define me, define my actions.”

“What...what if you forget...?” he stared at her and she read the naked pain, the pleading to help him because he felt that he was not strong enough, not sane enough, too broken, to be like her.

“You are never alone,” she replied and saw him flinch, wanting to accept her answer, but at the same time, so full of guilt that he could not. More than once, she wondered what he remembered in the past year, what memories twisted and buried seventy plus years deep were being brought up. She wondered if he contemplated ending his own life, to not live with the guilt of what he had done, so much blood in his ledger, more than hers. If her ledger was gushing with blood like Loki had taunted, then his was a torrential downpour. She could not say anything else because it was up to him now. She could not give him answers, only advice, because even though they were both the twisted products of the Red Room, they each walked their paths, side-by-side, once entwined, but now side-by-side. He had to find the answers himself, but at least he now knew that there were others by his side.

“Survive,” she said, reminding him of the words and lessons he had taught her so many years ago, and saw him jerkily nod. He stared down at where Steve had left the two protein bars on the seat next to him. It was something, not the beginning of anything, but at least it was something and Natasha could only offer what had been offered to her, a chance at a second life.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

I've always wondered what made Grant Ward so special that he placed second to Natasha in espionage scores, was sought out by John Garrett in a juvie center, and what made him such a good sniper in the span of six months in the wild. Granted, all of it could have been done by SHIELD training, but it always kind of made me wonder in a world of top notch SHIELD recruits and MCU – hence the twisted proto-Red Room background-half-trained-by-the-Winter-Soldier – before he blew up the place thinking it was his family. And yeah, I know he is taken away by law enforcement at the end of Season 1, but I figured after a year, Coulson would have transferred him to where he was just to make sure he stays in place.

Also the idea of Natasha not exactly being born in 1984 and with a variation of super soldier serum in her is a mix of her comic background (Infinity Formula) and my previous story,  _ Coterie _ . The fact that she survived being battered by the Hulk, and being poisoned when everyone around her dropped dead made me think that she has a tiny variation of super soldier in her. Even she does not know her birth year, but I can say as an author, for purposes of this story's universe, she was born somewhere during height of the Cold War and occasionally kept on ice like the Winter Soldier, hence her current age.

 


	16. Chapter 16

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 16_

 

Steve was roused from his nap by a tapping noise in his ears as he opened his eyes to see that they were flying through white clouds. He glanced over, blinking the sandpaper feeling from his eyes, to see Maria lifting her finger away from the microphone of the headset, and flick a few switches before the sound of the quinjet's engines died, replaced with the quiet blast of repulsors in hovering mode.

“Roger that, Control, hovering over coordinates, I have the ball,” Maria flicked a few more switches and Steve watched in fascination as they started to descend, straight down into the midst of concrete and carefully manicured park grounds that barely flickered with the camouflaged mirror technology that he had only seen on the original Helicarrier. He watched as the park seemingly swallowed them up before replaced by the old metals and construction of a modern-day hanger with tunnels that led to the familiar looking bricks of World War II bunkers.

A few quinjets were nearby as Maria gently set them down, along with other armaments, jeeps, trucks, and familiar black matte vehicles that had the SHIELD logo on them. There were a few giant guns, but not as many as Steve would have thought for an underground bunker. He thought he saw the nose of a very large jumbo jet, but could not tell, in the dim lighting of the hanger bay.

“Thank you Control, Hill out,” Maria signed off as she removed her headset and flicked a few more switches and the sound of the quinjet's repulsors died. Steve also removed his headset and got up, wincing a bit at the pull of tightened muscles and still-healing wounds as opened the door and stepped out of the cockpit. Natasha and Bucky were already standing, Bucky not even looking at him as he reached over to gather his backpack while Natasha rearranged her belt. He had no doubts that the two of them talked, but could not discern if anything happened. To his brief pleasure, he noted that the protein bars were gone and hoped that they were at least eaten or the very least, placed in Bucky's tac vest to be eaten later.

He reached to the overhead netting and pulled down his shield, side stepping Natasha who slapped the control to open the ramp. Securing it behind his back, ignoring the tug of his harness against the wounds, he walked half a step behind Maria as she preceded everyone down the ramp.

“Director,” Maria called out at the sight of Phil Coulson standing at the bottom with a woman he did not recognize, and Agent Triplett who seemed to be restraining himself if only just. He glanced at Maria before looking at Coulson at her address and raised an eyebrow. Fury had been willing to give up his title to Coulson? And when did it happen? He glanced at Natasha, but her face was a professional mask of blankness though he thought he saw that she was pleased also by the change in title for Coulson. They had all found out three years ago that Coulson was technically third-in-command of SHIELD if it was compromised after Thanos had attacked the Helicarrier to get Loki. The fact that Fury had bypassed Maria and picked Phil to lead SHIELD in a clandestine manner spoke volumes as to how much both he and Maria trusted Coulson with the organization that they held dear to their hearts.

“Agent Hill,” Phil did not seemed affected by the title and nodded at all of them. “Captain Rogers, Agent Romanov.”

“Director,” Natasha murmured before smiling a little, “suits you.”

“Still getting used to it, though officially I'm just a rogue agent,” Phil shrugged in his mild-mannered way before gesturing to the two that accompanied him, “this is Agent Melinda May, and Agent Antoine Triplett.” The Asian woman nodded once at them while Triplett smiled at them, mostly maintaining a sense of calmness about him. Maria and May seemed to be acquainted with each other, giving small nods of recognition before she rolled her eyes at Triplett's slight fidget.

Coulson's gaze slid past them and Steve turned a little to see that Bucky had all but stopped a little behind them, every inch of him tense with the expectation to fight or flee. Steve opened his mouth to say that it was fine, that he was safe, that there was no harm here before Coulson stepped forward, hand extended, a kind look on his face.

“Phil Coulson,” he introduced himself, “an honor to meet you, sir.”

A part of Steve breathed a sigh of relief. He had no idea how Phil would address Bucky, but the veteran agent had all but taken that decision away and addressed Bucky as someone to be respected, be it Sergeant Barnes or the Winter Soldier.

Steve watched as Bucky stared at the hand that was offered to him for a long moment and just when it almost to the point of awkwardness, to his surprise, his best friend slowly met Coulson's hand with his own and clasped it gingerly. The kindness in Coulson's gaze blossomed into one of understanding and let go at the same time Bucky withdrew his hand, almost as if burned.

Steve blinked, the sense of overwhelming joy filling him.

He forced himself to swallow past the painful lump in his throat and received another shock as Bucky spoke up. “Alexander Pierce's files say you died three years ago. But you have been operational since then.”

“Really?” Coulson seemed genuinely surprised before shrugging, “the next time I see him in hell, I'll tell him that whoever did not update those files should be fired. Second chances don't come around that easily.”

Steve wondered if his serum-enhanced heart could take another shocker, but it seemed to keep beating as he  _ saw _ the dark humor underneath the barest twitches of Bucky's lips at Coulson's answer before the other man turned and walked past them, introductions over. He gestured for them to follow him as May and Triplett fell in step behind him and it was only Natasha nudging him to move with a sort of discreet stumble into his shoulder that he followed. Steve heard Bucky falling in step behind him, Natasha slowing down to half a step in front of him to provide a human barrier of sorts – still acutely aware that his programming was unstable at best and that Steve providing him with his back to him was a vulnerability.

“Most of the command staff is in the Ops Center, I'll introduce you to them when we get there. We've gotten reports back from the two teams sent out that they found wreckage scattered across several miles, but no sign of bodies. They've recovered some of the wreckage and Fitz is doing an analysis of the composition of the blast to figure out what was used. We can run a trace on shipments of explosives and hopefully figure out if it was HYDRA who attacked Stark's plane and where they're located.” Coulson led them through the tunnels of the bunker and Steve was struck at how familiar, yet unfamiliar the whole place was. There were clear signs of the fact that the SSR had used it as their base of operations in London, but at the same time, the lines of different colored wires, lights, equipment lining the halls, all of it was modern technology.

“Could Tony and Sam have made it to land?” Steve spoke up behind all of them.

“The potential is there, we've directed one of the two quinjets to check the coastlines, but they were closer to Greenland than the Canadian coast. We've been mapping out the small unformed and unnamed islands from the where the Continental Divide is in the Atlantic, but the grid is very wide,” Agent May answered, “our losses here have compromised some efforts thus far.”

“Where are we on Strucker?” Maria jumped in.

“He has not made any movement that we know of to indicate that he is aware of us,” Coulson replied as he swiped his card through. That statement sounded oddly specific as Coulson pushed open the set of old blast doors to reveal the familiar command center the SSR had used back in the day. Aside from the trappings of modern technology, Steve knew that if he closed his eyes and listened to the sounds in the room, it would be like as if he had never left a little over three years ago.

“He knows,” Natasha spoke up behind Steve as Coulson gestured for them to head to a corner of the room where a few dividers were set up to partition the area. Steve resolutely ignored some of the silence that had fallen as they walked through the command center. He did however, nod casual greetings at more than a few familiar faces that had survived the fall of SHIELD and had found their way back here.

“And that's what worries me,” Coulson echoed in agreement as they rounded one of the dividers.

A young woman sat hunched in front of a laptop, her eyes glued to the screen and occasionally typing while a crooked smile was on her face, was seemingly oblivious to their approach until she waved an absent hand. “Hey AC,” she greeted and Steve was puzzled at the greeting until he caught Coulson heaving a quiet resigned sigh as if he was used to dealing with her. It took him another few seconds to realize that A-C meant Agent Coulson.

“Skye-”

“Yeah, just a second,” the woman, probably no more than in her early twenties typed a few lines before looking up, her eyes bright, innocent, and with a hint of mischievousness that Steve had long associated with Tony. He was however, a bit amused to see her bright expression turn hesitant as she realized who was in the room. “Oh...uh...hi...uh, I thought you guys were supposed to arrive-”

“It's been three hours,” Agent May spoke up rather dryly, arms crossed across her chest while Coulson just gave a mild look to her.

“Skye, Captain Rogers, Agent Romanov, you know Agent Hill, and this is-”

“...James,” Bucky spoke up quietly behind Steve and he froze a little, blinking rapidly at the name that fell from his best friend's lips. Since when...?

“And James,” Coulson recovered much faster than the startled looks everyone had given to Bucky before gesturing to Skye. “This is Skye, she's our resident hacker and computer expert.”

The young woman gave a sheepish wave, a little confused at what had happened, but seemed to accept it with a nonchalant aplomb before glancing at Coulson, “Doc Banner already go see Simmons and Jane?”

“Dr. Banner is actually in New York,” Hill stepped forward, “given what happened hours ago, it was decided that the best course of action was for him and for Agent 13 to lay low to not rouse public suspicion and panic.”

“Oh,” Skye looked a little disappointed, “Simmons is not going to be happy. She was looking forward to talking with him about gamma something or other along with Jane...”

“Thor's left for Asgard again,” Coulson chimed in, “we're not too sure when he'll be back, but he only stopped by briefly during the fight to help us before leaving again.”

There was something akin to disappointment that flashed across Maria and Agent May's faces that left Steve wondering what it was about as Natasha half-rolled her eyes at the two women. He had a swooping feeling of deja vu that felt like the time he had mistakenly though Peggy and Howard were fonduing before he found what it really meant.

“Did he get anything from Loki?” he pushed the thought to the side and focused back on the matter at hand.

“Maybe,” Coulson looked a little uncomfortable, “not too sure about that. Seems like the political situation Asgard's tenuous at best, maybe a bit messy at the moment; and it was actually Loki who brought Thor back to Earth briefly before Heimdall opened up the Bifrost to pick him up again as soon as it seems like Thor thought we could handle clean up. I still haven't figured out if Thor told Odin about the SHIELD situation here and the treaty we signed two years ago.”

“That's not good for Thor,” Natasha muttered mostly under her breath. Steve agreed with her. Out of all of the Avengers and the SHIELD personnel that was involved with drafting a treaty between Earth and Asgard, he understood some of the intricate royal political machinations, having read myths and stories from his childhood. But it was Natasha, Coulson, and Fury who seemed like they understood it on a different level far beyond all of them. Tony understood some of it, but compared a lot of it to Stark Industries.

“The information we found in the bank vault in D.C. indicated that the Red Room tech used on James' mind may be related to the Chitauri sceptre or even left over Tesseract technology that HYDRA might have stolen from Howard Stark or from Schmidt's notes,” Maria explained to half of the confused faces in the partitioned area, mostly all of the SHIELD agents except for Coulson. Steve noted that Natasha had tensed a little at the mention of alien technology related to the Red Room while Bucky's face was utterly expressionless.

“Oh...is that what I'm also searching for while you've got me hacking into Strucker's files?” Skye tilted her head, a wry grin on her face as she looked at Coulson, “I can keep secrets...”

“Need to know basis,” Coulson replied just as mildly, “and very personal at best.”

Skye glanced over to Bucky for a long second before shrugging. Steve was pretty sure that Skye and maybe even Agent Triplett did not put together who James was in relation to the Winter Soldier to the fact that it was  _ the _ Bucky Barnes. Steve could not read Agent May's expression, but he could see the metaphoric wheels turning in her head, slowly piecing the information together.

In any case, Skye did not press the issue. “Can't blame you then, AC,” she answered Coulson before looking back down at her laptop and tapping a few buttons. The screen behind her went from a bunch of computer windows with lines and codes he did not understand – and could not pretend to start understanding – to several images and a few camera feeds.

“I'm not done with the hack yet, but I found a few things and been keeping an eye on the conference through their security feeds,” Skye started as if she had not been obliquely addressing Bucky while talking to Coulson, “unfortunately we don't have eyes everywhere and whoever has been running CCTV's security system has been a right bastard in keeping me out.”

“I can ask my contact in MI6 to maybe put pressure again on the minor government official who's nominally in charge of CCTV to at least give us temporary access until next week,” Triplett spoke up, shrugging, “don't know how good it'll be though...considering MI6 in particular doesn't like us at the moment.”

“Trouble?” Maria asked, an eyebrow raised.

“In so much as ruining traffic patterns and slanting government accusations on them? Something like that,” Coulson replied in an aside.

“London was your former station,” Maria replied a little teeth in her sardonic smile, “they still like you there.”

Coulson only made a humming noise in reply before nodding to Triplett, “Try it again. Maybe we can get through to the quartermaster at least. He seems to be on good terms with parts of the government.” Crossing his arms across his chest, he glanced at Natasha, “You sure Strucker probably knows what we're up to?”

“The fact that he has not made any noticeable outward movement, especially if there was an open attack here means he knows,” Natasha replied grimly before leaning over to the screen and absently poking some of the video feeds Skye had brought up to show everyone, “you could think that he's like the other people at the business conference, and pretty much like any other tourist in a foreign country, oblivious to a certain extent of local happenings, but Strucker knows.”

“Is he the leader of HYDRA?” May asked.

“Strucker was never a leader type,” Natasha shook her head, “even if he liked to think of himself as one from time to time. No, at best, he was one of their financiers. Most of SHIELD's money trails came from private investors, some secret, some not secret.”

The immediate answer of someone like Tony who gave some of his technology to SHIELD popped up in Steve's head. Immensely wealthy from his own company and from years of investment by the Stark family, Tony would have been one of the more public financiers of SHIELD, especially his association of Iron Man with the Avengers and the Avengers linked to SHIELD. Steve shuddered a little bit as he wondered what Tony would have made of Natasha's assessment.

Skye and Triplett both looked like they were about to protest Natasha's assessment, but a quick look from Coulson prevented them from saying anything and Steve realized it was because the two junior agents did not know about Natasha's Red Room association and by extension about Strucker and how HYDRA created the Red Room in the first place. Agent May, however, wore a neutral look and Steve wondered if she knew of the details behind the current situation or had been involved in some capacity like Maria back in the day.

“So how do we want to play this?” Maria asked, looking between Coulson and Natasha.

“We had a plan for Mr. Stark to publicly announce his arrival at the business conference later today and for Mr. Wilson to be his back-up to throw Strucker off guard and then make a grab for him during the gala in two days time to celebrate the end of the business conference. Stark was going to use the media to insinuate that Strucker has HYDRA ties before 'authorities' brought him in for questioning,” May explained and gestured to Skye, “Skye said she had found a few potential paper trails to leak to the press, but like she said, the hack isn't done yet.”

“The plan still has merit,” Maria murmured, tapping her finger to her lip, “with the attacks here, we could put pressure and indicate that Strucker might be behind it-”

“We need proof,” Steve jumped in, not exactly comfortable with all of the shadowy talk, but also at the same time realizing that what his friends were planning. Even though Strucker had clear ties to the situation; to another person if it was not Strucker, it would have been akin to slandering and dragging names through the mud. He had only hours ago, accused the field hearing panel of doing that to Bruce and wasn't going to call himself a hypocrite.

All of the SHIELD agents except for Natasha turned their heads to look at him, almost as if they had all forgotten he was still in the room with them, hanging in the background. However, the most acute gaze he could feel was Bucky's boring at him from over his left shoulder. He could not sense the surprise as much as perhaps an imagined, or not imagined, sense of pride in Bucky's gaze. It felt like the ghostly remnant of who his friend was before his mind was horribly twisted, but at the same time, felt like the same approval he had seen when he had met and matched the Winter Soldier blow for blow on the causeway.

However fleeting it was, he still unconsciously hunched his shoulders a little, ready to defend his position to the spies in front of him. Maria with Agent May rivaling her, had the most dubious look on her face, and Steve caught the minute gesture to Bucky behind him – a non-verbal indication that she thought that Bucky's state of mind and reaction to Strucker the night before was all the proof needed; but Steve silently maintained his steady gaze and small frown of disapproval. Even if Bucky's reaction was the proof they needed, he wanted cold hard facts, some physical evidence or otherwise. He was  _ not _ going to use Bucky as the excuse if the media really asked.

“Cap's right,” Coulson broke the silence, bringing everyone's gaze on him and he smiled blandly, “we'll come up with something else. Probably a silent grab after the gala when he's got all of his business deals in order.” He gestured to Skye, “Keep the hack going, we need to know where he is for the day of the gala and what flight he has back to Austria or if he doesn't have a flight, what his plans are. Triplett, after you're done putting pressure to get us CCTV, let the other eggheads know I want to see what they can come up with in terms of escape routes and alternate routes for Strucker and for us.” The new Director of SHIELD turned to Agent May. “Let Simmons know we need more I-CERs as soon as possible. Also, ask Dr. Foster and her interns if they could help without compromising their own research projects. I know bio-chemistry isn't her forte, but I still want Fitz heading up the search for Stark and Wilson on his end without drawing him into this. Dr. Foster should be able to help Simmons-”

Whatever sentence Coulson was supposed to finish was cut off by the sudden rumbling and shaking of the bunker itself. Steve tensed, one hand on his shield on his back, wondering if it was another attack before seeing the other agents look towards the screens Skye had open, one of them showing the gigantic, familiar color-white wash of a Bifrost activation. Just as the Bifrost cut out, the rumbling stop and Steve saw the intricate rune carvings that marked a Bifrost activation on the ground of the London streets, and a very familiar red-caped blond-haired man standing in the middle of it, hammer hanging by his side.

“Ah, Thor's back,” Coulson said as if there was not the sudden rumbling that had interrupted him, “good timing too.” Steve relaxed, and out of the corner of his eye, saw Bucky slowly unclench his own fists, but still looking rather wary.

“Sir,” Triplett took that as his cue to leave, nodding to Coulson before May also left behind him. Skye was staring with open curiosity at them, but seemed to go back to her work on her laptop after a few seconds.

Coulson looked at them and gestured for them to follow him, “We've got some planning to do, but you guys must be hungry or tired. It's about dinner time now, so I'll show you the temporary bunks down here as well as what passes for the commissary. You're free to leave and eat above ground, but I don't recommend it right now – the paparazzi are swimming upstairs and the English government is still doing clean-up above ground.”

“Noted,” Maria replied rather dryly for them as they followed Coulson out of the partitioned area and past the main war room before exiting a set of double-steel doors. “Actually, if you don't mind Director, I would like to see your special guest if he is still on-site?”

“Ah...” Coulson's pleasant demeanor turned a little strained and Steve wondered who Maria knew was here. “Well, he is still here per my orders. Slippery bastard tried to escape federal prison once already before we got wind of it and transferred him here. Take the elevator down to level N and let the guard know who you are. He'll give you directions on how to approach and what you can or cannot do.”

“He's been cooperative?”

“Not so much as of late. I tried asking him about Strucker, but he says he doesn't know anything,” Coulson shrugged before Maria nodded at them and peeled off from their small group to head to the elevators.

“Prisoner?” Steve asked as they continued on.

“Used to be part of my team until this whole HYDRA mess last year,” Coulson replied and Steve winced a little.

“Uh...sorry-” he started, but the older man waved an absent hand.

“No hard feelings, Captain,” Coulson did not look disturbed by it and Steve briefly wondered if part of it was fueled by the giddy admiration he knew Coulson held for him as a fan of Captain America, “you did what you had to do. Hard decision, but the right one.”

He nodded just as Coulson quickly glanced back at him, his eyes twinkling in dark amusement, “However, I would have liked a heads up, you know, before you kind of landed me in between two factions, one who thought I was a HYDRA traitor, and the other who thought I was a SHIELD loyalist.”

Steve blushed a little, feeling heat creep up on the back of his neck. “...Sorry...” he apologized lamely, not know what else to say. However, he was saved from anymore light teasing or other statements from Coulson as a side door opened up further down the hall they were walking in and Thor stepped through, dressed in a more casual version of his armor.

“Thor,” Coulson greeted as the blond-haired Asgardian turned, his face momentarily serious before a large smile appeared on his face.

“My friends,” he returned the greeting, striding over to them and Steve found his own hand engulfed in an enthusiastic shake that hurt just a little bit as it was released.

Thor turned and bowed slightly to Natasha and Steve thought he would have probably kissed Natasha's hand if he knew he was not going to pay for it in Natasha's own special way. Greetings done with them, he turned slightly as Thor faced Bucky, an unreadable expression on his face. Steve did not know how much Thor knew of Bucky's situation, but hoped that at least his best friend would not be hostile to Thor. He flicked a look at Bucky to see his him with a blank look on his face, but Steve was beginning to think was not so much blank as evaluating and calculating behind his sharp blue eyes. What HYDRA had done to Bucky, it also gave him the needed skills to assess a situation quickly, make decisions in combat situations where life or death was just one strike, one bullet away. Back in the war, Bucky had that same quickness, that same ability to quickly assess a situation, but it was masked behind a facade of joviality and occasionally dark humor, more often than not communicated by hand signals or sounds made in lieu of radios.

But it seemed like Thor either knew about Bucky's situation or read it in his body language as his boisterous smile faded into a gentler, kinder one; one that Steve saw more often than not when Thor thought Loki was not looking as he had worked or was doing something during the two times on the Helicarrier after New York. “Had I known of the evils of Midgard so long ago, you would not have had to suffer so,” Thor said quietly before looking at Steve, “you too, my friend. This Schmidt and the Tesseract would have been swiftly dealt with.” He turned back to Bucky, “Know you are amongst friends and allies and may your terrors lessen.”

Greeting done, Thor stepped back, but before Steve could thank him, he waved an absent hand at him while making it look like a gesture to Coulson, “I must discuss the situation on Asgard with you, Son of Coul. If you have some time?” He turned his gesture into a wider one to show that he was not excluding the rest of them. “It is of relevance to the dissolution of the treaty made two years prior.”

“Sure,” Coulson started walking again and Thor followed, though he half-turned his body to make sure he was addressing them as they followed.

“My apologies for taking so long with the request. Loki, as you suspected, refused in aiding me with information about the Tesseract and of the Chitauri sceptre. I believe it was not out of spite as you may think, but rather because of his own experiences with it and of the geas contract made with Thanos,” Thor started as they passed through another set of double doors and into the familiar area that had been Colonel Phillip's office back during the war, but was now converted to military-style barracks. There were a few other doors that indicated more private quarters, but it was at least a somewhat familiar sight to see pressed sheets, metal beds, and neatly folded blankets.

Coulson then turned and left through another door as they continued to walk. “I would have returned sooner if not for the Allfather's demands. I...must confess,” Thor looked a little sheepish and ashamed, “the Allfather thinks I have spent too much time on Midgard of late, especially in the past year. He believes it to be the whims of fancy, that even with the treatise completed, Midgard is not yet ready, still a child, still backwater where we come before you as gods and wreck havoc and mayhem.”

“That's comforting,” Natasha murmured with dry sarcasm.

“I was delayed in my return, especially when Heimdall reported these...Centipede soldiers under HYDRA's command attacked the base,” Thor explained, “the Allfather had not explicitly forbidden me to return, but there would have been some disapproval and whispers amongst Court had I left. My brother had been obliquely mentioning the restlessness of those at Court, those who give voice to what they perceive as the shunning of the duties of my station. I do not care for the rumors of the Court, as I am able to see them more clearly in light of our treatise.”

Steve frowned a little, wanting to say that maybe Loki had a point there. He remembered how the Asgardian Court itself had shunned them at the same time had embraced them because they were warriors. They were shunned because they were still considered mortals, mayflies in the long lives of Asgardians and the rest of the nine realms themselves. But then again, he had only glimpsed the Court and did not really know the intricate politics or maneuverings behind it – those were definitely more Loki's forte and they all knew better than to take Loki at his word.

“Heimdall would not open the Bifrost to me when I had managed to slip out,” Thor looked a little miserable as he continued his explanation.

They had arrived at what was the commissary in the base and Steve noted that it was rather tiny, but at least the smell of fresh cooked food made it a lot more comforting than what it had been back in the day. Coulson then gestured for them to follow him to the other set of doors on the other side of the commissary.

“I at least convinced Loki to help me pass through the shadows and spaces in between-”

“You didn't make a geas promise, right?” Coulson asked with a degree of alarm and Thor shook his head.

“No, but it was a promise to find the sceptre and bring it back for him,” Thor looked grim, “I do not know if my brother knows of the fall of SHIELD, and gave no indication he had known, but I had not told anyone at Court or the Allfather for that matter.”

“Why not?” Steve tilted his head a little, puzzled as to why Thor would leave something so vital like that out.

The grimacing look Thor gave him reminded him of the same one he had when they had finished with the treaty two years ago; right after Jormungandr had his magick and source flayed alive from his very being. “To speak of it now, I believe would greatly imperil Midgard to those of the Nine Realms who harbor designs on your realm. You would not survive such an invasion and in my limited capacity, I would not be able to defeat them even with the Avengers' help.”

“The Jotuns? Frost Giants?” Steve remembered the gigantic blue-skinned creatures that had arrived to help them in T ø nsberg, Norway a couple of weeks after New York three years ago. They had arrived to help repel a second Chitauri invasion initiated by Thanos. Odin and the Asgardians had also arrived, but Steve had seen how animal-like and  _ feral _ the Jotuns had fought. Thor had explained much later that there had once been an invasion by the Jotuns almost a thousand years before that the Asgardians had repelled.

“That is one possibility...” Thor looked uneasy, “I do not know of the treatise drafted by my brother, the Allfather, and King Helblindi and recent battles with them has not given me any indication of easing my mind. But there are other realms, the Dark Elves, even the Light Elves, or Fire Demons of Muspelheim who would take the chance to harm everyone on Midgard because of the actions in recent years.”

“Opening up the realm to a higher form of war,” Coulson murmured, echoing nearly the same sentiment Fury had when he had first gathered them on the Helicarrier.

“Why does Loki want the sceptre now of all times?” Natasha asked, “we don't even know where it went after SHIELD fell.” Steve glanced at her to see something flickering in her eyes and wondered if she was not letting on as much as she knew. He wanted to call her out on it, but at the same time knew that if she was withholding information, it was perhaps vital enough to compromise someone or something – maybe even Fury himself since he was technically supposed to be dead. He at least trusted her to do the right thing after all they had been through.

“My brother did not deign an explanation,” Thor shrugged as they arrived at what used to be Howard's workshop converted into a giant area that looked like a cross between Tony's workshop and Bruce's lab, except with a lot more alien-looking equipment. Steve saw a small group of people clustered onto one side, sifting through what looked like burnt pieces of metal, lead by a young man who did not look like he was fully in control of his motor skills.

“Leo Fitz,” Coulson explained, gesturing to the young man, “he's still recovering from what HYDRA did to him after we hunted Agent Garrett down, but we found that having him focus his energies onto a project helps him improve his motor and vocal skills, even gets a bit of his old personality back at times.” The Director gestured to an equally young woman whom May was standing next to explaining something on the other side of the large lab space. Jane was near them, listening in while her two interns, Darcy Lewis, and a young man Steve did not know, were standing around, looking a bit bored. Steve did not see Dr. Erik Selvig anywhere, but supposed the man had his own projects. “That's Jemma Simmons, the other half of the scientific pair we call FitzSimmons.”

Steve saw Simmons look up, blinking in surprise at the sight of them before Darcy and the young man next to her perked up gestured wildly to Jane who looked up, a grin on her face at the sight of Thor next to them.

“Excuse me,” Thor bowed politely to them before heading over to the area and opening the door as Jane approached, looking for all intents and purposes a shy woman instead of the brilliant no-nonsense scientist that Steve knew she was, before giving Thor a hug. It was rather endearing to see, but Steve adverted his gaze to give them some privacy and caught Natasha rolling her eyes with a quiet sigh.

She muttered something in Russian and Steve heard the quiet one-word response from Bucky behind her before an impish grin appeared on Natasha's face.

The ding of an elevator near them made him turn to see Maria rounding the corner a few seconds later, looking a little less tense than before. “And yes, he's still in one piece,” she addressed them, and Steve supposed it was about the prisoner she had visited.

“Too bad,” Agent May murmured behind all of them and they turned to see her walking out of the room, leaving Jane, Thor, Darcy, the unnamed intern, and Simmons in the room. “You're kinder than I was, Maria.”

“Can't say that he's mentally ripped to shreds though,” Maria gave a wolfish smile in response to which Agent May matched with equal teeth.

Coulson coughed lightly before Natasha stepped forward, “Director, I have some information regarding Tahiti that our mutual friend asked us to look into.”

“I hate that place,” Coulson did not look surprised, but gestured for Natasha to precede him and looked at them as he took a few steps away, headed back to the war room, “um, there's a shooting range and training ground, at the same spots on this base, but the armory's kind of where I think the filing library was...” The implication that Natasha was going to talk to Coulson about Rumlow and Tahiti – whatever Tahiti was, Steve did not have all of the details and was too polite to pry – was not lost on him.

He nodded once as the two started to walk away, Agent May turning to follow them as the apparent dutiful second-in-command. Steve realized he missed a chance to ask either Coulson or Natasha if they had heard or knew what happened to Clint Barton, their wayward last team member of the Avengers. Ever since Barton had been incommunicado before SHIELD went down, he had thought to give the archer some space, to let him come to terms with what happened while he was under Loki's control, working with Loki in the aftermath of New York, and generally trying to make a life for himself again. But he would have thought Coulson or Natasha would have kept an eye on him even before that – but seeing that neither made mention of the other since seeing them again, made him wonder more often than not if Barton had been a casualty of HYDRA a year ago.

“Melinda, I'm going to need to borrow you,” Maria interrupted before waving Coulson and Natasha to keep going.

“Ma'am?” the Agent looked surprised before glancing at them.

“Uh...” Steve did not know what was going on, but was acutely aware that Bucky was still standing behind him.

“One of you is going to sleep, the other is going to get food. Then you'll switch. Both of you were in active combat four hours ago and before that, not even sleeping or eating. I'm going to mother hen both of you until you both get needed rest. We can talk strategy later,” Maria looked at them and Steve was a little frightened at how sharp her gaze was as well as how commanding her voice was. He realized that this was more than likely the tone that she used when she was the commanding officer of STRIKE Delta.

It was then that he realized Agent May knew the full extent of Bucky's current...deprogramming, or rather his fight of the programming, and understood what role she was to play at the moment. Steve was sure he did not need an escort, or a bodyguard, but accepted it since they did not have the quickness of Bruce or the Hulk or even Tony or Sam, or even JARVIS around to stop at least slow Bucky down. The fact that Maria had wanted someone else to ensure that Steve had ample warning before Bucky attacked again if he could not restrain himself, was reassuring to him – that they understood what they were dealing with in terms of the Red Room.

Steve turned a little and glanced at Bucky who was staring back at him. He could see the minute trembling of his fingers with his sharpened vision and wondered if the days of micro-naps were catching up to him. But before Bucky could do anything or even say anything, he turned back around and nodded at Agent May. “Agent May, if you would be so kind, point me in the direction of the commissary?”

The faint smile on May's lips told him that he picked the right answer and Steve could only hope that Maria at least had the experience of dealing with Natasha and Red Room programming to somehow get Bucky to sleep, if not rest. He let May step past them before following her, glancing over his shoulder to meet Bucky's unreadable look, “Get some sleep Bucky, we're safe here.”

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Minor spoiler alert – for those who have been following this story from the  _ Atonement  _ and  _ Coterie  _ plot-lines, what Thor says in this chapter  _ is very important _ and sets up a lot of what will happen in  _ Ragnarok.  _ Which is the story after this one is completed.

 


	17. Chapter 17

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 17_

 

Seven hours and twenty-six minutes had passed since he had all but passed out from sheer exhaustion after arriving in the general quarters area. Two hours and fourteen minutes since he had woken up and used the very old emergency exit underneath the bunk bed in the officers' room he had been assigned. Time keeping was a skill he distinctly remembering having even with all of the jarring memories, flashes of images that gave him double vision, through all of the pain, he knew he always kept time. He supposed it was perhaps a remnant of the days of World War II, of being a sniper, waiting, watching, keeping time until the completion of a mission or if an objective had a time limit.

James knew he slept poorly. He could still feel the days – or maybe it was weeks now – old exhaustion clinging onto him like a second skin; the scrape of sandpaper behind his eyes, the faint lingering pain behind his eyes since Rogers left his presence. The pain he clung onto, but ruthlessly pushed aside all other exhaustion, as he emerged from the shadows of the tube station this particular exit was linked to. A small faint part of him that he had begun to recognize as perhaps the Sergeant Barnes, the Bucky, and maybe the James, that almost everyone called him – definitely not  _ Yasha _ – felt a little guilty at leaving the officers' room in the state that it was. But there had been no way he would have successfully ex-filtrated- no, it was  _ not _ an enemy base, the target-  _ Rogers _ had said so - left without inquiries or concern or questions he knew the others on the base would have asked.

He could tell the difference now, could tell the sincerity, the willingness to leave him be if he wished it. They had asked, not the direct words of  _ if you'll let us _ , but they had asked and left it at that. They had asked and did not prod, poke, force him to do anything they wanted, but he also understood that there would be others who would have wanted to go with him, watch over him – make sure that he did not attack the target-attack Rogers, or if HYDRA was still around.

He did not want anyone with him at the moment, not until he did this  _ task _ , did this  _ mission _ by himself. He needed to prove, maybe to himself, maybe to others, but just knew he needed to prove –  _ Rogers wanted proof _ .

Rogers would get proof. ...Steve...would get it.

He suddenly, instinctively, recoiled inward at the name, waiting, watching, hoping that the pain- And breathed out quietly when a second later he did not feel anything except for the dull pain lingering behind his eyes, digging into his mind. Natalia had said the pain was good for her, reminded her of whom she had to protect. He felt sorry then, because he remembered firing three shots, those three shots that killed the pain, killed her target, perhaps even killed her resolve. Colonel Nicholas J. Fury was dead and the pain of that target had disappeared as soon as those three shots ended his life.

He flexed his metal hand inside the pocket of the jeans he had found in the officers' quarters. They were a little larger, but mostly fitted and the pockets were deep enough for him to hide his left arm, the rest of the light wind-breaking jacket also found in the room covering the bulk of his tac vest and arms. He could hear the faint whirl of mechanical circuitry, a sign that his arm had been damaged to a certain extent fighting Rumlow forty-one floors above with his Extremis-enhancements, perhaps further damaged by his wrecking of the room before he slipped out.

He had made sure to make as much noise as possible when he had woken in the cold sweat of a nightmare, but already with a plan forming. He had broken the desk of the room first. True to form, he saw the shadow of Agent Maria Hill peering into the window of the door before disappearing, more than likely willing to let him deal with whatever supposed demons she thought he needed to deal with. He had then twisted the chair, a horrific screeching of metal-on-metal, before hammering the walls a couple of times then enacted his plan and punched open the escape hatch that had been sealed over when the not-dead Agent Coulson had taken over the base.

He knew where it was because of the swarm of memories that had almost made ghostly images of long before superimpose themselves over his eyes as Coulson had escorted them around the familiar-so-unfamiliar halls of the bunker. He knew this part of the base used to be Colonel Phillips' private quarters and office because there had been several distinct memories – flashes really – of standing in front of the grizzled old soldier asking him his skill set, his assignments, and most of all what his duties were to the Howling Commandos. He could not get much of an impression of Phillips in those brief flashes, but he did remember the escape hatches – everyone did in case the base was compromised – and remembered that Phillips was a hard-nosed man who outwardly did not show compassion, but inwardly seemed to consider himself a father figure to those of the SSR and the Commandos.

He climbed up the small ladder up to the tube platform itself, ignoring the somewhat surprised looks of a couple of people waiting on the platform, and walked along the halls, up the stairs with quiet efficiency, and out of the turnstiles, gently chivvying a person in front of him to move faster because of his own lack of ticket to exit the turnstiles. The person seemed to not really notice him as he moved past and into the still quiet crowds of Londoners and occasional tourists still queuing up for tickets or were generally trying to find which was the most efficient line and stop to take for whatever their final destination was.

The intel he had memorized earlier from the brief screens on the hacker Skye's laptop was an incomplete picture, but James knew from experience – along with a healthy dose of disorienting memory flashes – that he would be able to instinctively find Strucker away from the business conference center. It was just an instinct, a sense, perhaps an enhancement of sorts that he had received so long ago, a long forgotten memory that had not surfaced, but he knew he had been given latitude, autonomy in some missions. His handlers needed him to track his targets and make contingent plans in case the first part of the plan did not work, or even the seventh part of the plan for that matter. The searing pain of reminder that he had to kill Steve Rogers, Captain America had been accompanied by orders saying he could use whatever resource was necessary to stop the target. He used whatever means was necessary, destroying the flight line on one of the Helicarriers to prevent Rogers from having backup, ripping the wings off of the paratrooper Sam Wilson's flight harness, to grabbing the targeting chip from Rogers because it would force him to chase after it, leaving himself vulnerable.

All instinctive, all he knew with deep certainty not programmed. If it was Strucker – and he had no doubts considering how he had reacted when Dr. Banner had shown him the sketch – who had programmed him, had burned the targets in his mind, wiped his mind, left him reeling; then Strucker had wiped just enough to let him function, use his instincts, blend in, all sorts of high-functioning tactical thinking, but took away enough that he could not prevent himself from ruthlessly attacking Rogers... Even now had been an exercise in suppression, even with Natalia's presence to act as a buffer zone for him. It was weak, something inside of him recoiled at that, to rely on someone when he should have been able to battle it himself. But another part of him clung onto the kindness, the offer of help – if he wanted it – like a man drowning in the vast sea of his muddled mind.

They had shown him kindness when he had not even shown anything in return. He had been afraid of that kindness, because he knew it had been used against him –  _ that was why they had him kill Katrina's handlers, because they were incompetent and showed kindness _ – but they had still shown it and left it open-ended for him to decide what to do with it. He wanted to suspect their motives, but in the weeks since he had arrived at the Avengers Tower, the target, Rogers, had done nothing to warrant such suspicion and instead had shown him more kindness, had given him the space he wanted, because he could  _ not stupidly overcome that searing pain of programming – WHY?! _

James forced himself to keep his breath calm at the sudden rage that had filled him, his feet moving along the well-worn sidewalks of London. He focused back on the street he had exited out of the tube station at, meandering towards the business center where the conference was being held. Barely glancing at the empty building save for the night clean-up crew and security guards, he kept his hands jammed in his pockets, pretending he was headed to the Boots at the corner of the intersection. Several hotels were attached to the building and he jaywalked across the street along with several others who were also headed to the pharmacy. He ducked into an alleyway and slid into the shadows, waiting as several people walked by before opening a side door and slipping in.

The harsh fluorescent lights of the basement and what was clearly a service hallway greeted him and he quietly moved forward, pausing at an open office door. With his enhanced and sharp hearing, he heard the quiet breath of someone who was sitting in the office followed by the soft clicks of a computer mouse. The click was somewhat rhythmic in nature which meant whomever was in the office was more than likely playing a game of sorts. He timed the clicks and stepped quickly past the open office, pausing only for a few seconds on the other side to ensure that he was not pursued. The clicks continued and he hurried down the hallway, finding the service elevators near the middle of the building.

He pushed the button to open the doors and heard the ding a few seconds later before stepping in just as the clicking in the office stopped. James waited on the panel side inside the elevator and pressed both the open and close buttons, making the door open and close before freezing halfway open as a slightly older man appeared, glaring at him.

“What are you-”

He affected a sigh and rolled his eyes as he brought out his phone and put it to his ear, “Yeah, you ass, I'm stuck down here now just because you thought it be funny to do something like this!” He grimaced apologetically at the man who had narrowed his eyes and looked to speak again, “Sorry man, I know we're probably giving Americans a bad rep, but my buddies and I are here on break and these  _ ass-clowns _ decided it would be awesome to play some truth or dare.”

“You should not be-”

“Down here, yeah, I know,” he rolled his eyes again and pretended to glare at his phone even though there was no one connected to the other end, “don't start laughing! Fuck you...” He heaved a sigh and looked at the man, “Listen, any chance you can get this thing to work to bring me back up? I mean...it's got a keycard and I just kind of pressed a few random button combos...”

“Fine, fine,” the man looked annoyed before leaning over and inserting his keycard before pressing the [L] button, “listen, if you pull this stunt again, or if I see any of your rich kid buddies from room 314 down here again, I'm going to have to talk to management and have you escorted from the hotel.”

“Yeah, I get it,” James affected an apologetic tone, “sorry about that. You know, business conference and stuff...”

“Does not give you the excuse to behave like idiots,” the man chided sternly before the doors closed on him in a final warning as the elevators took him back up to the Lobby.

James put his phone away and shed the persona of the young businessman who was out on his first business conference as the elevators started up.

* * *

“Sir?” the voice was completely and utterly apologetic and while as much as Phil Coulson wanted to throttle the technician on the other end, it was, in truth, his own fault for leaving in his earpiece after he had gotten ready for bed. That mostly consisted of tossing his nominal pressed jacket onto his room's chair and falling straight into bed, rummaging half for covers while attempting to kick off his shoes and sort of failing at it. The day had been long, starting from watching Captain America's conference around a little after one in the afternoon London time, eight in the morning on the eastern seaboard of the United States; to defending the base and shooting out against Centipede soldiers before securing them. Then watching Skye work and try to analyze what Strucker knew and did not know. Followed by their new arrivals four hours after the battle had been finished – and his own shock and sort of combination of contained glee and hopefulness at the sight of one of the living Howling Commandos, the sniper of the group Bucky Barnes - and then now...

“Sir?” the technician on the other end insisted and Coulson yawned before opening his eyes, noting that he only got, at most, half-an-hour of sleep that he was not exactly aware of getting.

“Report,” he absently tapped his earpiece, heaving himself off of the bed and rubbed his eyes with his fingers.

“Um, I spotted something on the cameras, but don't exactly know what it is. It's definitely related to the security cameras-”

“Is it another attack?” Coulson was more awake at the news, getting up and grabbing his jacket as he left his room and headed towards the war room.

“I don't know sir, but it doesn't seem right,” the technician apologized.

Coulson sighed, “All right, I'm on my way. Does May know-”

“Yes sir, she's on her way from the commissary,” the technician said and Coulson was a little glad that the tech followed protocol before waking him. Melinda was technically in charge of the overnight shift, but she had insisted on him getting some sleep before she turned in for a few hours herself. However, whatever had their tech rattled enough to wake him from his supposed four hours of rest warranted both of their attention.

He arrived in short order, his suit jacket a little rumpled, but still pressed enough that he was not worrying too much about the details. The war room was quiet in the overnight hours – apparently HYDRA liked to occasionally sleep too – and Coulson knew that the smaller branches of the fledgling rebuilt SHIELD in other parts of the world were operating in quiet capacity, leaving the major gifted and international issues to local country agencies for the moment. HYDRA was the current big looming enemy and this time it was SHIELD's turn to quietly step within the shadows until it had enough strength to take them down once more.

“What do you have?” he asked the technician, the same young man that Stark had caught out playing Galaga on the bridge of the Helicarrier three years back, as he leaned against the giant table. A three-dimensional map of the earth was projected on top of it, showing various hot spots, and the technician was standing near it. Coulson remembered the technician, Evan Richards, brought in for disciplinary action and briefly put on probation for re-training before assigned to the newly built INT-Helicarriers. He was one of the few crew members who survived the destruction, and one of the few who was a SHIELD agent, biding his time to try to help sabotage the carriers from within and not caught by the HYDRA agents inside.

Coulson noted out of the corner of his eye Skye still working in the smaller room, seemingly not even moved an inch from where she had been since the battle had ended earlier in the day – hacking and working her way into Strucker's files. There were empty containers and several cups near her, so he knew that she at least got something to eat and probably had breaks, but he dared not disturb her. He knew that she would pace herself to her own tune, he had seen that when she was on the Bus; relentless when she was pursuing something or doing a hack, but also at least prone to realizing that sometimes the body needed food and rest – unlike a certain genius playboy billionaire philanthropist. He turned back to Richards and nodded once as the tech brought up a projection on the side of the three-dimensional see-through globe.

“I've been helping Skye go through the security footage to see how HYDRA knew where we exactly were. I mean, it's not a secret that Thor appears and the Bifrost leaves its mark, but even he goes through the backdoors and through several underground buildings or adjoining halls before arriving here. HYDRA knew exactly where to hit, so I thought we might have a leak or something.”

“Personnel?” Coulson was not adverse or stupid to not realize that while he had been settling London as a new base of operations, HYDRA would have taken the opportunity to send spies once more into SHIELD's midst.

“Agent May's personally going over that list, sir,” Richards replied and Coulson nodded once. Good for May, he was glad that she was already on it without him even telling her. It was also nice to know that she had his full trust and did her duties and even beyond that to help him rebuild after everything. They had been through a lot together and while Coulson was very aware of the feelings between the two of them – even he had a mutual respect and admiration for her that edged into something more personal – he wanted to at least keep her at arms distance, just to be sure that they both had their heads on straight. And if they did...well, then, he would let it go where it eventually went.

“So what's the emergency?” he asked, crossing his arms across his chest as he heard rapid footsteps approach behind him and turned slightly to see Melinda approaching and nodded once at her in silent greeting.

“This sir,” Richards dragged a footage with a finger and expanded it a little. It was a looped footage of one of the tube exits and Coulson leaned a little closer, watching it several times before he noticed just out of the corner frame...

“Someone jumped from the tracks onto the platform,” May stated, a frown on her face, “from the east direction-”

“Yeah, there's also this-” Richards never finished what he was explaining as Coulson's earpiece crackled and Hill's voice sounded rough and exhausted.

“Phil, Barnes is gone,” she coughed a little and seemed to turn away from the earpiece, “hey, can you hold it-yeah...Yeah, he went through there...shit...”

The technician blinked, waiting for them as he and May both listened on their earpieces, Maria's voice returning a little stronger, “Yeah, Sergeant Barnes is definitely off reservation. He's gone Phil...”

“Shit,” May cursed quietly and flatly, “why the hell did he go off-”

“Strucker,” even though Coulson considered himself knowledgeable in all aspects of what history recorded Captain America, Steve Rogers; he would have been remiss in his admiration (re: fanboy) of Cap if he also did not study the rest of the Howling Commandos and their histories. Joining SHIELD so long ago gave him access to their history as the SSR and mission reports that he occasionally read from time to time, most of the time after a hard mission, a way for him to de-stress. The psychological reports that the SSR had on all of its personnel, including the legendary Peggy Carter, Howard Stark, Col. Chester Phillips and the Commandos themselves, was obviously classified a higher level than he was, but Nick Fury had seen the potential in the Phil Coulson, and occasionally slipped him some of the files – with the strictest rules that he did not publicize information or did anything untoward with it unless he wanted to quickly disappear and be on his shit list for the rest of his life.

So Coulson knew a lot about the man formerly known as Sergeant James Barnes. His experience with Natasha and the Red Room programming also made him uniquely in the position to know how Barnes would react and why he had stayed by Steve Rogers' side, how quiet he was during the briefing – a little bit out of intimidation and overwhelming memories, but mostly out of intelligence gathering – and Coulson had noted the seemingly unassuming manner he had adopted, but also the bright intelligence and ruthlessness that HYDRA had only improved upon and called the Winter Soldier. Barnes had arrived not for only Steve Rogers' sake, but to use the skills as the Winter Soldier to find his possible creator and get back a sense of who he used to be.

“He's after Strucker,” Coulson glanced back down at the footage Richards was showing him and moved his fingers so that he was holding it in a frame in the solid-light tech before zooming it in so that it was larger than his head. He let the footage loop and stared at the shadowy corner where the movement of someone jumping up on the platform was.

“Richards, what else-”

“This sir,” the technician hurriedly flicked another video at him and Coulson saw that it was one of their security tube footage. It was almost dark and reddish looking from the emergency exit signs in the tunnels and for a second Coulson did not see anything until it looped again and he saw it. It was the barest of shadows, but there was the glint of silver-

“Maria, what room did Barnes take?” he asked, touching his earpiece.

“The one where you sealed Col. Phillips' emergency exit,” Rogers' voice behind him made him turn to see him, Natasha, and Hill walking in. Cap had his shield in his hand and it looked a little dusty and covered in plaster.

“He picked it,” Hill frowned shaking her head in both amazement and the audacity of what had happened. Coulson heard the unspoken words of how she could not believe that they had been fooled this badly and knew where she was coming from, but ignored her unspoken comments as such.

“He's going after Strucker,” he repeated instead, turning back to stare at the footage briefly before making his decision. He turned to Skye, “Skye!”

The young woman jumped a little as if coming out of a trance and looked around before staring at him. “What's up AC?”

“Can you get me footage of the last...” he trailed off a little as he did a few mental calculations in his head, “twenty minutes of the hotel that we know Strucker is staying at. Outside footage and any and every single camera we have inside.”

“I don't have some of the security footage yet-”

“Just give me what you've got,” he shook his head and saw her nod, her fingers moving rapidly before a mess of windows appeared on the main projection. Coulson waved away the image of the globe and expanded the footage as the others crowded around. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Thor walk in, hammer swinging at his side, but looking prepared as if expecting another battle. Triplett followed quickly behind him, looking a little sleep rumpled. Good, at least someone informed them of what had been happening.

“What's happening chief?” Triplett nodded a greeting to him, rubbing his eye.

“Barnes went off reservation,” Maria said, “we think he's going after Strucker.”

“Killing him?” Triplett asked looking at him and Coulson gave a minute shrug before looking at Natasha who was staring at the various projected images, a frown on her face. Next to her, Rogers was also frowning, but Couslon easily read the defensive hunch he had unconsciously adopted along with apprehension and worry in the other man's body language.

Natasha stayed silent, and it was Maria who answered, “He didn't react well to the sketch of Strucker, if that's any indication.”

“I...can't find him in any of this...” Rogers murmured before glancing at him and Coulson answered his question before he even voiced it.

“The hotel and conference centers are about half an hour away. Extrapolating the super soldier serum and his speed, he should have reached the tube station from the exit in about fifteen minutes. I'm going under the assumption that he probably remembers the tube lines since they've been mostly unchanged since World War II.”

“Just about,” Rogers nodded, “we had to memorize them in case this place was compromised and we needed a quick evac.”

“But I mean, how-” Skye had left the smaller area and approached the table, her eyes wide with wonderment and shock, “how the hell did he know? I mean, I had all of those windows up and not even the ones of the hotel, just like one-”

“You think maybe he remembered something about Strucker-” Maria started quietly.

“Found him,” Natasha cut off whatever Hill was saying and pointed to one of the windows, which enlarged itself with her finger stabbing into the hard-light projection.

“Wait, uh, where...” Triplett leaned forward, squinting and Coulson found himself doing the same, watching as Natasha played the looped footage again at twice the speed. There were people getting in and out of the various elevators, including maintenance, more than a few drunken business conference men and women staggering about-

“There,” she said and Coulson squinted hard before he thought he saw it.

“The maintenance-”

“Yes,” Natasha replied and Coulson watched as the footage slowed down to normal speed and he could just barely catch someone walking out of the maintenance elevator, looking so...ordinary and unassuming.

“How did-”

“I didn't even seen his arm-”

“It's him,” Natasha confirmed again and Coulson believed her. She did not want to mention to anyone who was not privy to James Barnes' current record that she had only spotted him because of her Red Room training. Privately, he had to admit that even he had his own doubts at the footage which looped itself again, but was inclined to believe her.

“Shit...he  _ is _ a ghost,” May breathed out next to him, “look, look at how he- did he just palm a keycard?”

Natasha leaned forward again, looking at the image for a long while before nodding, “Yes he did. Good catch, May.”

“Sir, should we interfere before he creates an international incident?” Maria asked and Coulson frowned, flicking a quick look at Rogers who was still staring at the footage. He could tell that even with people pointing to who in the elevator lobby footage, Rogers still had not spotted his friend, but at this point looked more concerned about what his friend was going to do than spotting him on cameras. Coulson himself was thoroughly impressed that Barnes had the wherewithal and knowledge to actively keep himself in the shadows, even with his bright silvery arm. No wonder the intelligence community as a whole thought of the Winter Soldier as a ghost – this was proof in of itself.

“I...don't think he's going to kill Strucker,” Natasha spoke up, her voice a little distracted as she peered closely at several more loops of security footage of the hotel lobby from various angles.

“You don't think?” one of May's eyebrows rose skeptically. “He  _ is _ a trained assassin...”

“And he could have easily waited until Strucker was crossing the street to the business conference six hours from now and shoot him from the rooftops,” Natasha shrugged.

“Or just shank him with a knife in close quarters at night, making it look like an accident,” Maria interjected across the table and Natasha nodded at her fair assessment. Coulson could clearly see Triplett, Thor, and Skye following the slightly cryptic conversation back and forth, not privy to all of the information, but starting to put some pieces together. Thor seemed to put it together faster than Triplett or Skye as his frown became more and more pronounced minute by minute; and even he was starting to look more closely at the security footage.

“Natasha?” Rogers spoke up, his voice a little faint with hope, but still full of authority that made him Captain America.

“He didn't go through the main entrance,” Natasha leaned forward and rested her hands on the edges of the table, “if this was an assassination, he would have gone through the front door with the intent on finding out which room Strucker was in by attacking his bodyguards who are in the lobby.”

“Bodyguards?” Triplett jumped in, utterly confused and Coulson blinked, surprised and also a little confused.

“There and there,” she pointed out two seemingly innocuous businessmen and women who were lounging around the couches of the lobby. One was laughing with a pretty woman on her arm, the other with a man and woman next to him. All of them seemed to be just enjoying themselves for the night. It wasn't until Coulson assessed the semi-grainy footage that he saw the slight bulge of rather large guns hidden underneath their business jackets that he realized they were bodyguards. He also noticed the sharp looks each had given to people entering and leaving the lobby.

“How do you know they're Strucker's bodyguards instead of some other important dude's bodyguards?” Skye asked before shaking her head, “no wait, sorry, bad question. He's the only one-”

“Because the ones they've surrounded themselves with are other bodyguards of other businessmen and women staying in the hotel. They are keeping an eye on them as much as the others are also watching them,” Natasha explained, “those two are Strucker's because they're Red Room trained.”

Coulson saw Skye mouth the words 'Red Room', but cut her off before she could ask what it meant, “So he's not going to assassinate Strucker?”

“We were trained to be efficient and fast whether to make it look like an accident, get information, or an outright execution,” Natasha murmured absently poked a security video footage without really looking at it, “and he wants answers.”

She suddenly stopped poking the footage and leveled them with a dark look, “All of you have been trying to treat him like he is walking on eggshells. Don't. Yes, he may be a unstable, may be prone to mental breakdowns, but you are dealing with the Winter Soldier here. You are dealing with  _ James _ . You are dealing with a man who had been reprogrammed by HYDRA, but also had the wherewithal to keep most of his tactical mind  _ intact _ and active, maybe even enhanced it. This is the man who was considered a  _ ghost _ in the intelligence community,  _ highly trained _ and utterly ruthless. Do not underestimate how much of a tactical intelligence he has because if you do-”

She pinned Rogers with a merciless glare, “-You will allow him to  _ finish _ the mission he was programmed with.”

Coulson could see the slight chastising look Rogers wore as well as one on Maria's face and immediately realized what had happened. Through he did not know the whole story, he got the general gist of it was that Natasha did not want any silly stunts, anything that had happened to her while she had been overcoming her own programming to kill Fury, and wanted to sternly remind both Rogers and Hill that Barnes – though still horribly broken and gathering the pieces of his shattered memories and self together – was still a very highly-trained and tactical-thinking operative. He was still a soldier underneath and an intelligent one at that. Natasha needed to remind them that while the Red Room erased a lot of who they were, they also left a lot of who they were – albeit, bent and twisted for their own purpose. It was like stripping a weapon enough for it to function without the knowledge of why and how it functioned – it just did.

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes had been stripped of almost everything except of what made him a great scout and sniper for the Commandos. HYDRA had then enhanced that, turning him into the Winter Soldier; letting him operate with the latitude for fulfilling his mission parameters in any way he saw fit. They gave him objectives and perhaps direction for how they wanted his assassinations to go, but otherwise also were not stupid enough to not leave him with some creativity and room to improvise should things go wrong. There was still something left of Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes in the Winter Soldier, and it seemed with all that had happened, both Rogers and Hill had forgotten parts of that.

Maria snorted quietly, “He picked the room...” They had all been played for fools, Coulson realized, had not encountered someone as unique as the Winter Soldier since Natasha had came in from the cold years ago. They had been lazy and complacent, much like SHIELD had been with HYDRA growing in its shadow.

Natasha only nodded stepping back from the table as Coulson rubbed his chin, coming to his decision. He ignored the way Skye and Triplett's eyes were wide open in shock with what Natasha had revealed and nodded in agreement leaning forward and resting his hands on the edges of the table much like she had moments earlier. “He's going to need an exit, even if he plans on killing Strucker or leaving the building with him in tow.”

“Sir?” Triplett spoke up voice quiet and respectful as he overcame his shock.

“May, prep a vehicle for exit procedures. Natasha, go with her, you would know best where he would be exiting out from,” he thought fast, his mind racing with the different possibilities and scenarios before looking at Triplett, “Triplett, Hill, I need the two of you to prep an interrogation room-”

“Director-”

“Not for Barnes,” he quickly held up a hand to reassure Rogers who had spoken up, “in case he does bring in Strucker. Either way, we can convert it into a morgue if he brings in a body. Triplett, I'll also need you to let Simmons know we need her services. Tell her to prepare both sodium thiopental and whatever she needs to do clothing and composite analysis of a body.”

“Sir,” Triplett nodded once.

“Skye, do you need a break?”

“Heck no, fifth cup of coffee and I'm doing fine,” Skye smiled at him, but he noted that it was strained with what she had just found out.

“Keep at it then. If you can, reroute all of the footage you have – do we have CCTV yet?”

“No, they're still being stubborn-” Triplett shook his head, “sorry, I tried.”

“You did your best,” Coulson was not too happy with the result, but it was more than enough on Triplett's end before he utterly burned down his connection with MI6 and through MI6 with the British government. He did not need a double-o agent sniffing after Triplett just because of a distant familial connection.

“I'm still using brute strength hacking, so maybe it'll give us something,” Skye shrugged.

“Do what you can,” Coulson frowned a little, “and give me all you've got on the hotel. Channel 5 security encryption.”

“Roger that,” May said before leaving with Natasha in tow while Triplett and Hill headed in another direction.

“Sir-”

“Captain, I would like you to stay, you too Thor,” he looked up and addressed the two.

“But I think I should be with the extraction team-”

“There's nothing you can do there,” Coulson felt a little uncomfortable at the look his idol was giving him, but pushed passed it and shook his head, “May and Romanov will only be escorting Sergeant Barnes back as soon as he's finished his mission.”

“And if they run into HYDRA?”

“Are we expecting HYDRA?” he had to admit, it felt utterly foreign to stare down that infamous look Steve Rogers wore when he was being stubborn, and Coulson  _ knew _ that look had made even Fury back off, but he needed his idol, needed Cap to keep his head on straight, to think straight and not think with his heart at the moment.

It seemed to have click as Rogers' eyes softened just a little and he nodded once. “We're not expecting HYDRA...” he answered quietly, almost resignedly, “because Bucky wouldn't be that stupid to alert HYDRA by taking out his bodyguards out front...” He shook his head and sighed, his shoulders dropping a little in tired defeat, “I would...”

Coulson wanted to protest, but Thor was already one step ahead of him – literally and figuratively – and placed a comforting hand on Steve's shoulder.

“The hardest lesson learned is to place faith and trust in those who worry us so,” Thor rumbled quietly, “those whom we want to protect with the fiercest of desires as familial kin, but to also let them do what they do best.”

Rogers' lips twitched up in a grimacing smile before he took a deep breath and seemingly cleared the demons that had been plaguing him away with that breath. He looked up at him and Coulson smiled inwardly at the confidence and seriousness in Cap's gaze, “All right then, what can we do from here?”

“Find out where Strucker's room is,” Coulson handed over two earpieces to Thor and Rogers who put them in before flicking several videos at them, “the faster we figure out what room he's in, the easier it'll be for May and Romanov to let him know he has an exit strategy.”

“Good,” Rogers nodded, “let's get to work.”

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

And...Natasha and Coulson have done it again since  _ Atonement _ . Taken over the story. (sigh)

 


	18. Chapter 18

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 18_

 

James rounded the next flight of stairs and continued climbing. He had two keycards on him now, one for the wayward room 314, the other from pickpocketing the housekeeper that had come to the third floor to clean up the spill he had made with the ice machine on the third floor. He had pocketed his first keycard from a slightly inebriated businessman who had been waiting for the elevators as he had gotten off of the maintenance once, running briefly into him and lifting the card right out of his slightly limp fingers. It had been childishly easy, a defining trait of all of those who lived in hotels. Granted, the businessman was distracted by the woman he had his arm around with and had been fumbling for his keycard, so it had been easy to palm it.

He had then discreetly placed it in his left hand and pressed it against his cellphone, ensuring that the magnetic strip was wiped before approaching the concierge desk which was just a bit away from the front desk in the lobby area. This had been the riskiest part as he had immediately spotted two of Strucker's bodyguards in the far distance, seemingly occupied with the men and women surrounding them, but also watching the coming and goings of the lobby like hawks. They did not pay much attention to the elevators and those who were heading to the bars, but rather seemed to watch the entrance for any potential assassins or counter agents who would have walked through.

It had all but confirmed that Strucker knew something of the Red Room, seeing the bodyguards' posture and air as similarly trained as his own – the affectation of joviality and of a personable atmosphere, the ability to blend in with crowds and the like. But he  _ knew _ he was better than them and so had quietly explained to the concierge that he had accidentally placed his card next to his cellphone without a layer of protection and could not get into his room. The concierge had asked him his room number without a second look apparently used to people who did not realize how powerful a cellphone's magnetic field was to strip a card of its usefulness. He had given it as 314, before also asking about leaving a package for another hotel guest at the conference. He had then threaded a short, simple story about how the man had only given him his name, but could not leave it with the conference center's security staff due to concerns about corporate secrets and the like.

The concierge apparently also understood the importance of corporate secrets and mentioned that he was not the first to do such a thing and they did have secure vaults before asking for the person's name. James had given it and had received a room number in return – 1415. His card for 314 given back to him, he had taken the elevator up to the third floor and had made a mess of the ice machine before calling on a phone to the front desk for housekeeping about the mess. Housekeeping had arrived and he had pickpocket the woman of her master keycard before making to leave for room 314 and ducked into the stairwell.

Now, he climbed, past the fourteenth floor and exited on the fifteenth. The hallways were quiet, occasional noise of television sets blaring out news or shuffles of people in their rooms. Mindful of the security cameras up and down the halls, he slipped into a corner blindspot near the elevators and quickly flashed a laser pointer he had taken earlier near Skye's workstation. The camera's red light flickered for a few seconds and James moved, opening the window and climbing to the side of the shallow ledge as he closed the window.

There was a light breeze that whipped at his hair, blowing strands into his face, but he ignored it and eased his way along the shallow ledge. His metal arm anchored him as he shuffled slowly and carefully past the windows of the other hotel rooms. Occasionally he ducked as he saw movement behind curtains, but managed to keep his balance and counted the windows to rooms ratio silently before pausing at one of the three windows that was room 1515. All of the rooms on the odd-numbered side of the hotel were extended suites and 1515 had three windows. Two were main living room windows while one was a slightly smaller bedroom window.

He shifted his grip and climbed downwards until he was just above 1415's bedroom window. There was no sign of light or movement from the drawn curtains, and he let himself hang from his metal arm. Most bodyguards always looked downwards for threats below the floor they were on instead of upwards, thinking that only snipers would be on the rooftops. No one usually looked in the middle or from above for an assassination not involving guns. He drew out a small tubular lockpick from one of the pockets of his tac vest. It was one of the few objects he had in his utility belt and original tac vest that had kept with him.

He gently inserted into the top of the window lock, turning it slowly and hearing the soft clicks of the lock being unlocked. This particular hotel's windows had been retrofitted with newer windows, but still held the same old aesthetic of long-standing London, so the locks on their windows were easy to pick. He finished with a final click and pocketed the lockpick and drew out a small can of penetrating fluid that he quickly sprayed on the top hinges of the window. Task done, he stretched a little bit to get a good grip on the window and pulled it up, the rollers smoothly operating without a single sound. Hooking his leg underneath the window to steady it, he climbed further down and rested on the ledge, peering in to see that no one had moved nor was there an indication that he had been spotted.

The screen was easy to kick in and he caught the edge of it before it tilted over into the room itself and set it to the side. Swinging in, he landed lightly on his feet and immediately closed the curtains he had disturbed in his entrance, his eyes immediately adjusting to the sudden plunge of darkness. Quickly moving across the expanse of the bedroom, he paused as the shift of wind behind him in the open window revealed the matte black glint and barrel of a gun pointed at him – along with a very awake Baron Wolfgang von Strucker behind it.

_“Again...”_

_“No...” he breathed, tried to speak, “p-please-” His words hitched upon the rubber guard on his mouth as he choked and tried to swallow his spit, the coppery taste of blood- Choking on it- arcs of agony lashing at him-_

James gritted his teeth at the memories, the images of the same man, the same  _face_ looking just as he  _remembered_ it. This...this was the man who caused him so much pain, so much agony, so much he pleaded, wished, hoped,  _begged_ -

“Your skills have not dulled Winter Soldier,” Strucker stared at him without the monocle in his eye, but very much so with the expression that James instinctively  _knew_ he hated. “I was expecting-”

James moved, taking the first reactionary bullet into the chest, feeling pain bloom across it as it impacted the kevlar, before wrenching the gun out of Strucker's hands with his metal one. He heard the sickening crack of bones being crushed before he grabbed Strucker by the head with his flesh and blood one, muffling his screams of pain and rammed his head into the headboard of the bed. The man immediately fell limply silent onto the bed, but he was already moving again. He brought his newly acquired gun up and fired, killing one of the bodyguards that had come into the room with a clean headshot.

He vaulted over the bed and whipped the barrel of his gun into the face of the second bodyguard that had followed his compatriot in. The man grunted and clutched his bleeding face as he blindly retaliated, but James ducked under the wild punch. He reached around and slammed the ball of his palm upwards into the man's nose, the gush of blood pouring into his fingers, making them slick, as the man slammed into the door frame and toppled over, dead from the shards of bone in his nose jamming into his brain stem. He let the body fall to the ground and knelt down beside it, firing two more bullets into the man's heart, his clothing muffling the sound of the gun being discharged. The body twitched and he turned and did the same with the other bodyguard he had shot.

Task done, he dropped the gun from his metal hand and wiped his fingers coated in blood, noting the sticky, coppery smell, before heading back into the bedroom. He jammed two of his fingers under Strucker's throat and felt his strong pulse before gathering him up in a fireman's carry. There was a banging sound on the other side of the wall followed by muffled French about letting others get some sleep and to keep the bedroom activities down and James allowed the corners of his lips to twitch in a dark humorless smile as he hefted Strucker on his shoulders.

He headed out of the bedroom and into the main area of the suite before opening the door and hanging the [Do Not Disturb] sign outside the door. Pointing his laser pointer at the security camera, he saw the light wink out and hurried towards the stairwell and got in just as he glanced behind him to see the red light come back on. Shifting Strucker's unconscious body again, he headed down the stairwell, going all the way down to the basement floor. He opened the door a crack and paused to hear the sounds of rhythmic clicking from the person who was on the floor.

“-at least your friends would be jealous of your high score now,” the voice was definitely  _not_ male and instead sounded very familiar.

“ _Natalia_ ?” James peered into the office to see the Black Widow sitting in the chair where the older man that had confronted him in the elevator and sent him up to the lobby, used to sit. Said older man was apparently unconscious by a small table, arms folded underneath to pillow his head.

She looked up with a rueful smile on her face, “ _Took you long enough_ .”

Standing up, her smile became a little more predatory at the sight of Strucker across his shoulders and gestured wordlessly to follow her. James could not help but feel an odd sense of familiarity to all of it, as if Natalia had been his exit plan before. Surprisingly it was not accompanied by any sort of pain, but only a sense of warmth and maybe hint of camaraderie. He had done this with Natalia before, knew it with certainty even though he could not remember it. The flashes and spikes of pain that accompanied his fragmented memories was not present nor did it give him the swimmingly nauseating double-vision that almost always made him lose focus, but James was certain they had worked together in the Red Room, in Project Black Widow, something.

He silently followed her out to see an unmarked black SUV waiting in the alleyway, Agent Melinda May sitting in the driver's seat with a sour look on her face. The look did not lessen as she touched her ear and ducked her head to speak as Natalia opened one of the doors and James unceremoniously dumped Strucker's unconscious form into one of the seats and climbed in himself. He closed the door behind him as Agent May rolled out of the street silently, the hybrid SUV quiet in its initial start before she joined the flow of late-night traffic, the engines rumbling as she added more speed.

“How many guards?” Natalia asked in English.

“Two,” he replied.

“We have at least eight hours before the guards downstairs will become suspicious,” she said. James could see that she was holding a tablet of sorts and it showed the security camera footage of the hotel itself. He caught one of the corner images showing a replay of what looked like footage from the tube station, just the flash of a dark shadow in the corner – so that was how the remnants of SHIELD had found out. He supposed that the not-dead Director Coulson and others were on the other end of the earpieces Natalia and May wore as May nodded absently to something not said.

Ignoring whatever was not said or said, he stared out of the window in an effort to not easily crush Strucker's throat while he was crumpled in a heap next to him. Rogers...the target- Rogers...wanted proof. Proof... The fact that Rogers could have easily used him as an example – he did not miss the look Maria Hill had shot at him during the briefing – and declined to do so, to had made him want to seek out, want to  _prove_ that he would give Rogers the proof he needed. He could have easily killed Strucker,  _wanted_ to even. He had ruthlessly tamped down on the urge to snap Strucker's neck, to hit him harder than he had on the headboard of the bed. To smash his head in again and again until there was nothing but brain matter, blood, and cracked bone. That Strucker had inflicted so much pain, so much agony... But no...Rogers...he wanted proof, wanted to keep James Buchanan Barnes, Bucky Barnes,  _James –_ maybe it was all true – out of the media, protect him- James cut that thought off-

_He protected Steve all of the time because the stupid idiot did not know when to not antagonize the bullies all because-_

Rogers...Steve wanted from Strucker the proof of the Red Room, of its horrific existence- Even though he was proof, he was the existence of the Red Room, but he had not been asked and he knew that he would never be asked by Rogers, by Steve, because Captain America would never sacrifice someone like that, would sacrifice himself  _first_ before asking anyone else to do such a thing-

_“You did_ what _,” he glared at Steve with flat eyes and saw his best friend recoil a little at the look he leveled against him._

_“It was a dummy grenade, Bucky...that's all-”_

_“Uh-uh,” he shook his head and pursed his lips, “you do not get to say something like that and expect_ me _to laugh it off like the others! No! You do not get to_ throw _yourself on a sword like that and expect me to accept it like it was_ nothing _!”_

_“Come on Buck-”_

_“Don't 'come on Buck' me, mister! You could have_ died-”

_Something in Steve's gaze became pinched and angry before he suddenly found himself backing up a little at the heat of his best friend's glare. Even when Steve was skinny and tiny, the glare was probably one of the few impressive things that could get him to back away, but combined with the recent changes and super soldier serum, Bucky realized that Steve's glare was even more terrifying now. “And so could you. You're the one who signed up a year ago and could have easily been shipped out back then_ to be killed _. Falling on your hypothetical sword just for what?! So don't think you have the high horse in telling me what I can and cannot sacrifice after what you pulled before they actually shipped you out. You left me behind a year ago when you signed up behind my back and then encouraged me to not do it and you_ knew _what it meant to me. You left me, your best friend and brother behind-”_

_“So what?” he shot back, cutting Steve off, “so you got yourself experimented on,_ could have died _, and just because you wanted to follow-”_

_“Yes!” Steve shouted loudly, but Bucky snarled, not about to back down from the stubborn mule of a friend who now was taller than he was. “I wasn't going to let you face it alone-”_

_“You were supposed to stay home! Stay home, collect tins-”_

_“We are_ not _having this discussion again-”_

_“Well, apparently we are,” he replied sarcastically, acutely aware that several soldiers had stopped near them, watching them yell at each other, but even more aware that he did not care. Steve just did not get it, that he did not need to sacrifice himself to become a human guinea pig for some experimental serum because this war was nothing more than stopping a gigantic bully, that everyone was going to die, that none of them were going to make it home-_

_“Gentlemen!” Colonel Phillips' voice startled them apart and both automatically did an about face and stood ramrod straight, salutes held stiffly to their heads as they saw the Colonel march across the area towards them. The other soldiers who had paused quickly scattered and went about their business, seeing the Colonel in a foul mood._

_“Is there a problem?” Phillips asked, his voice all but pleasant._

_“No sir,” he opened his mouth to answer, but it was Steve who beat him by a split second and he echoed his friend's words._

_One of Phillips' bushy eyebrows rose, clearly not believing their answer and Bucky's gaze shot forward, staring at the tents beyond Phillips' head. They were in deep trouble...and he more than Steve considering he was_ yelling _at a ranked officer._

_“Sergeant Barnes and I were discussing a new initiative to create a strike force against HYDRA-”_

_He resisted the urge to look sideways at the words spewing out of Steve's mouth; wondering when did his friend pick up on his skill to bullshit like him before realizing that maybe he had learned something after all these years. Phillips still stared at them with a leveled look, but even he seemed amenable to the idea and Bucky did think it had merit, especially if the rumors were true that the SSR was going to go after HYDRA. One could only hope that it would put Steve out of harm's way against Hitler's forces since that was where the 107 th was originally tasked to do on the front lines._

_“Good idea,” Phillips interrupted him as he scratched his chin, “however, it'll have to wait a week or so. Your new orders came in. You're heading back home to do a round for the presses about your rescue of the soldiers at Schmidt's base. Senator Brandt wants to present you with a medal after that tour is done-”_

_“With due respect sir, I believe I am more of use here-”_

_“And you, Sergeant,” Bucky unconsciously stiffened further as Phillips looked at him, “have enough points to go home.” The corners of Phillips' mouth twitched in what looked like disapproval, but he realized it was more about the 'points' system that the Army employed to give soldiers a rotating chance of going home for leave or even to be honorably discharged, than his achievement of getting enough points to go home._

_“Sir,” he started slowly, “I'd rather stay.”_

_Colonel Phillips looked surprised, “Please do explain.”_

_“No explanation necessary sir,” he replied, noting out of the corner of his eye, Steve staring at him, “I am medically fit and willing to continue to fight. Those points can be used by others who need them.”_

_“Bucky-”_

_Phillips held up a hand to stop Steve from talking further and peered at him closely. “Not everyone gets these points, soldier...”_

_“Captain Rogers and I have a pact to watch each others backs until the end of the line, sir,” he replied steadily before adding with a sharp grin, “_ he _doesn't have enough points yet to go home.”_

James pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head to clear away the double-image of memories swimming across his vision as he felt the SUV slow down and stop, having arrived back at the base. This was the clearest memory yet, in all of the flashes he had been having and he wondered if whatever had been done to him was breaking apart, letting loose the torrent of memories, of faces, images, impressions that he had tried to grasp onto, but did not understand the context. He understood this one better than all others so far and glanced down at Strucker's body, wondering if because he had made the decision to spare him – for now – that something had broken in him, giving him the clearest picture yet in his mind.

He opened the door and stepped out, peering over the top of the SUV to see Director Coulson and Agent Hill standing by a gurney as Strucker was dragged out and loaded onto it. Beyond them, he could see a couple of the other agents, Triplett and the young woman named Simmons, waiting. There was no sign of Rogers, but he did not doubt that he was looking in from somewhere. “Take him to room A-38 and check his vitals,” Coulson ordered as James walked away, headed back to the general quarters area to at least wash the blood from his sticky hand.

“James,” he paused a step at the Director's call and could feel eyes on him. “Thank you,” the Director said and James felt like something loosened in him as he nodded once, sharply and continued on his way.  _They never said 'thank you', much like they never said, 'if you will let us...' He was expected to complete his missions, expected to take orders like any good obedient soldier. He was a weapon, a tool for them. They trained him well..._

And the pain, James understood the pain now; understood what Natalia, Natasha, had said earlier in the quinjet. The pain was defiance, was telling those who had made him, those who had programmed him, those who had caused so much pain, so much agony, so much hurt, that it was a giant 'fuck you' to everything.  _'Till the end of the line_ .

* * *

Coulson's specialty was not interrogations, but he was very good at getting answers and actions out of people. It was all about psychological assessment and reading a person before applying the right amount of leverage and occasionally acting stupider than he normally would to ensure the right reaction. It was what made him one of the best spotters in the Army Rangers. He had been a fair hand with a gun, but his superiors and sniper partners preferring him to spotting since he could easily pinpoint and guess where their targets were headed to based on their body languages. Phil had not intended to join the Rangers and sniper school, but considered it a tribute of sorts to Captain America back then, by being a spotter and secretly pretending to be able to watch Cap's back from any HYDRA attack in some remnant childhood dream in his head.

After SHIELD had recruited him, Fury who had been his S.O. at the time, suggested he take some psychological courses at the local university as well as within SHIELD's Academy system. He had come out of that ranked only second to Fury himself in the assessment system – and then asked Fury to rank him even further lower for anonymity's sake; Fury had laughed long and loud as he complied with his request. It was only when Natasha had been brought in from the cold and quietly, unobtrusively questioned him with her unique skillset that he realized there was someone even better than Fury.

There was a master of interrogations within his group, Agent May, but Coulson did not want May torturing answers out of Strucker – at least not yet. He wanted to see what made Strucker tick, what made him the way he was, and most importantly, why did he look exactly like how James Barnes had remembered him from all those years ago. Some would have said that perhaps Barnes remembered Strucker's image from recent memory, but Coulson had read in between the lines and knew based off of his own education that psychological torture and conditioning happened very early on in whatever process it took. Barnes clearly remembered something painful, something horrific enough for him to actively remember Strucker and point him out. That meant that when he had been in HYDRA's hands since World War II ended, Strucker had to have been there.

And no man, the exception being Barnes and Rogers and the power of cryogenics, would have  _not_ aged in seventy or so years. Strucker looked no older than mid-forties. As far as he knew, the Centipede formula did not prolong the life of anyone – just so happened to make them almost super human in strength along with maybe some added madness to boot in the case of former Agent Garrett. Perhaps Strucker had been in cryostasis, but that did not seem to be the case since his company had been very active for a long time. They were still compiling information regarding Strucker's business ventures and company, but there was a lot to go through and Coulson knew he was at a slight disadvantage when Strucker woke up and they began to question him.

At the moment though, they did not have to worry about any tracking devices on Strucker's clothing or in the man's body, Simmons having effectively scanned him with her equipment. Six and half hours until they had to enact a plan, one that Coulson was still half-forming in his head, or six and half-hours before they returned Strucker to his room, maybe dead, maybe alive – he still had not quite decided yet. Dead would surely put HYDRA on high alert and potentially compromise whatever efforts they had in place to find Stark and Wilson. Alive would compromise the efforts even further if Strucker reported what he saw. He considered breaking Strucker's jaw or fracturing his larynx so that he would not talk, maybe also breaking his wrists for good measure to not write down anything, but it was a moot point.

He knew James wanted to prove a point by bringing in Strucker alive; prove it to himself or to others he did not know, but at the same time, it also tied their hands together. At best, he would probably find someone about Strucker's height and build, someone in the base who was good at infiltration and assuming Strucker's identity to potentially cover for him on the last day of the conference along with the gala before they enacted their other plan and pretend to kidnap Strucker after the gala. It would buy them some time during the day to find out more information about Stark and Wilson. Coulson had no doubts, even without proof, that HYDRA had orchestrated the attack on Stark's plane and kidnapped both men.

“He's waking,” Simmons' voice made him blink and shake himself out of his thoughts as he leaned against the corner wall of the small room they had turned into an interrogation room. Strucker had been seated in a chair, bandages wrapped around his head to ease the giant lump he had received when James had knocked him unconscious. His hands were bound to the armrests of the chair with zip-ties, and a small intravenous line of saline had been stuck into his wrist to give him some hydration. Simmons sat near him, monitoring his vitals as well as to change the saline bag out to sodium thiopental if and when he asked for it.

It was also the primary reason why Coulson did not want May torturing Strucker. Simmons did not need to see this side of SHIELD, not if he could help it. He knew that she understood some of it, that SHIELD had a darker side that was not HYDRA, but if he could at least protect her from the actuality of it, then he would. He flicked a look at the area of the room where the one way glass was before looking back at Strucker as he shifted a little before jerking his hands and feet, all zip-tied to the chair.

The older man opened his eyes with a slight groan as he blinked it a few times and Coulson stayed silent, letting him get his bearings as he looked around. His gaze moved all around him before settling in front and he started to laugh. Coulson only blinked and waited for the laugh to peter out, noting Simmons' worried gaze, before Strucker sighed and shook his head.

“Is this the best SHIELD can do? Sending the Black Widow to question me?” Strucker gestured with his chin to Natasha who sat in the chair opposite of him across the table. She had not moved a single inch through the whole process and merely stared at Strucker with a simple look as he flashed her a smile before turning his head to face him. “You I do not know...but you would use  _her_ on me?”

Strucker leaned forward a little, his eyes glittering with something that Coulson did not like. It made him uneasy at the same time that it looked so familiar, but he could not place it. “I know all of her secrets, all of her techniques. You cannot question me in such a fashion that would be effective. All I have to do is stay silent and not say a word.” He sat back, giving the two of them a mirthless smile and gestured with his shoulders to do what they will.

“Actually,” Coulson pushed off from the wall as Natasha stood up from the chair and he switched positions with her, “thank you. You just confirmed what we needed, so really, I don't think she needs to stay here.” He glanced at Natasha, a bright smile on his face, “Right?”

“Of course,” Natasha replied back with an equal one, though edged with a little more teeth than his own.

“Ah...” Strucker tilted his head to the side, “you think to use little Natochka here as the front for revelations of the Red Room, do you not? Because with her identity thrown into the wild, into the open, there is nothing left for her to lose, you say, right?”

Coulson watched, keeping his gaze mild and unassuming. However, he could feel the warning signs of danger, that Strucker was hitting all of the points, everything a lot closer than he liked. Something about it was not quite right and he knew he was missing a piece, but also felt like that piece was right in front of him, too blind to see it. There was one thing he was very sure of and it was that Strucker loved to hear himself talk and gloat.

“Which one would you sacrifice, Natochka?” Strucker turned to stare at Natasha who only raised a single eyebrow, acting completely disinterested. “Hmm? Oh, but do not make your decision yet, little one. Shall I tell all three of you, perhaps all those who are listening in, of how he broke? Of how he begged for the cold of cryostasis?” He smiled a little, “But why speak of it when there are more? More stories of how we experimented, how we played with his mind? Made him think that he had autonomy and then see what happened when we ripped it away from him? Made him think that he had hope and then shattered it when we ordered him to kill. The pain? Right in the back of your head? Right in between the eyes? Nothing more than to ensure compliance. Perhaps we had rigged an explosive, like we had with the eyes of your allies and agents. To control them like we controlled him. Perhaps you, Natochka, have one too...”

“We both know it is a lie,” Natasha's voice was very steady, her smile almost genuine except for the barest hint of fury of hot anger behind her eyes.

“Yes, yes...” Strucker nodded congenially, accepting it, “I only wanted to see if those around us would have reacted. No matter...” He sighed as if having a light conversation and smiled at the two of them, “What would you like to know, Agent? Natochka? I have the secrets of the Red Room all up here. I can tell you stories, can tell you facts, can make up things if I wanted to. I can tell you how we unmade the Winter Soldier, cobbled him back together and then unmade you, Natochka. How you think that perhaps you would have shielded yourself from the trainers by taking him as your lover? That it was the skills we taught you for you to survive that you thought better than Katrina or even Anya and Yelena. Or maybe we programmed him to seduce you, to ensure your compliance – after all, you were the best we had trained; or maybe the only survivor...” He looked thoughtful before shaking his head, “No matter, there were always others. This eventuality had to happen, all according to plan.”

“Um,” Coulson spoke up, bringing Strucker's gaze to him and raised his hand a little, “if I can interrupt your evil gloating shtick...” He flashed him a mirthless smile, “Just to be sure, I mean, your whole gloating and speculation, it's nice and all and is definitely not true, but it's kind of old. I mean, seriously? You sound like Loki in some respects and I think he was kind of a better at this whole monologue than you, to be honest...”

Strucker gave him a wolfish smile and leaned forward a little, “Then do you want to hear the real story, not-so-dead Agent Coulson?”

Coulson managed to keep his face impassive as he only nodded and mirrored Strucker, leaning back against the chair, “Do tell.”

“You should be far more worried than you are, Agent,” Strucker said quietly, “because we have known about this, about everything. Why do you think we have not actively pursued the Winter Soldier since SHIELD fell? You may think we sent him on a suicide mission, intended to die fighting his long-forgotten friend to the death.” The man smiled toothily, “Yes, that was the original intention if Alexander Pierce had anything to say about it. The Winter Soldier was a  _ghost_ . Why have him come out guns blazing when we could have easily killed Captain Steven Grant Rogers with a sniper's bullet. Three shots that ended Nick Fury's life could have easily also ended Rogers' life.”

He affected a look of chagrin, “Oh, but perhaps it would have made him into a martyr. Captain America, assassinated like the Presidents of old, a hero publicly lauded, but kill number twenty-six on the Winter Soldier's file, just a bare mention, an addendum.” Strucker shook his head, “But irony as she pleases and it was amusing to see the two go at it, to see which version of the super soldier serum was the best. Dr. Zola and the rest of us did work a masterpiece and pitted against Dr. Erskine's creation? Well, it was a thing of glorious beauty; mere pawns in the grander picture, the grander scheme of things.”

Coulson blinked once, “Let me guess, conquering the whole of the planet like HYDRA days of old.”

“No,” Strucker smiled as he pulled on his restraints, “no, no, no, dear Agent Coulson. The arrival of Thor? The invasion of the Chitauri? No...we have grander schemes. There are worlds around us, beyond us. Earth is just a pittance...”

“I don't think Asgard's going to roll over that easily...” he said dryly, suppressing the shiver of fear at the mad light in Strucker's eyes. Not only did he sound like he believed what he was saying, Coulson actually found himself  _believing_ half of what was being said. He still had a feeling that Strucker loved to hear himself talk, but there was still an uncomfortable unable to pinpoint feeling he had about him. Something so familiar, yet so...alien and foreign at the same time.

“No, no they will not,” Strucker agreed before shaking his head, “but you need not worry about that, Agent, nor you Natochka. No, there are far more pressing concerns for you to be worried about.”

“Please enlighten us,” Natasha spoke up from where she was leaning against the wall, her gaze simple, but Coulson saw the anger in it. The conversation must have dredged up a lot of memories about the Red Room for her, but he was not worried for her mental health. It was the mental health of the Winter Soldier, of James, on the other side of the partition. He had not seen him in the room when he had peeked in before entering this room, but had no doubts that Barnes would have wanted to see what questions would be answered.

“In the end, we will have our goal,” Strucker shifted his gaze back and forth to the two of them, “along with the Winter Soldier, returned to our fold.”

“We kind of got that feeling when you attacked the field hearing,” Coulson replied and Strucker nodded once.

“Yes,” he tilted his head a little, “that was the plan. We anticipated him regaining his memories, trying to regain his sense of self. After all, we had Natochka here to thank for all of the intel regarding a Red Room agent who has been wiped several times and finally escaped. But you silly girl, you are not as important as your  _Yasha_ , as your James, as the Captain's Bucky.”

“So he's important,” Coulson shrugged as if it was not a big deal, “I can see why. Sniper, highly trained, got a metal arm I think you are fond of, and a very effective asset.”

“Juvenile assessment, Agent, come now, you can do better than that,” Strucker made to spread his hands out, but only succeeded in swinging his elbows outwards, his hands still tied to the chair, “he will return, whether through his own quest to regain his memories, regain his sense of self, or you will take him along with you.”

“You sure about that?”

“Very sure,” Strucker smiled like a pit viper, “after all, we did capture Tony Stark and Sam Wilson. Friends, allies, comrades, no? If the media has not speculated yet, they will soon. Tony Stark hardly disappears for a long while, even if he is playing dead to get to his personal enemies. Iron Man can never stay out of the spotlight. We hold the technology to re-make someone's mind. I am very sure you do not want that happening to Stark or to Wilson. So you will go, you will pursue your leads and the Winter Soldier will follow.”

“We could drug him six ways to Sunday and not let you near him,” Coulson countered.

“I'm sure you could and would,” Strucker agreed, “but we know how the good Captain here acts, how his heart bleeds. He would walk into the trap set for his dear friend, his brother, and by now, I would think that enough memories have returned to ensure that the Winter Soldier would allow no such thing. You humans are so easy to predict.” He glanced at Natasha, “After all, the pain of a living target, one stuck permanently in your mind is what keeps you on your supposed righteous path, is it not, Black Widow?”

Coulson dared not look at Natasha, but heard no response from her and saw the reactionary smile on Strucker's face. At least the crazy man answered several things he had been wondering about and gave him more than enough to work with. The main thing was that he now knew that no matter what, it was a trap and it made his job easier. Still, he could not help but worry over what else was not being said, yet being said with silence.

“I think we have that covered,” he answered, bringing Strucker's gaze back on him and saw the other man smile a little before making a tsking sound.

“Agent Coulson, you underestimate your current situation. You think you have the advantage,” the man leaned forward again and suddenly growled, “you do not.” He leaned back and the twitch of his lips suddenly made Coulson very nervous and wary. There was something not right, not... He brushed the thought from his mind as Strucker stared at him, “After all, there are only two words that I need to say.”

Coulson only raised an eyebrow at the challenge.

“Sputnik.”

Coulson's eyes darted to the area where the partition was as a heavy resounding thunk shook the glass. He met Strucker's gaze and the man smiled, this time utterly inhuman,  _alien_ , and predatory.

“Tchaikovsky.”

Coulson twisted in his seat in time to see Natasha's eyes roll up into the back of her head before she collapsed boneless to the ground. Strucker just only laughed.

* * *

** Author's Notes: **

The 'points' system mentioned in the flashback by Col. Phillips was a way for soldiers to rotate for leave without deserting or otherwise. It was used in World War II by front-line troops that were not hampered by injuries (or even if they were hampered and continued to fight). It is more effectively described in the final episode of  _Band of Brothers_ with Easy Company members getting enough points to go home or pooling their points together to send one of their members home whom they think really deserves it.

Bucky's enlistment/drafting – I kind of have the theory that instead of waiting for his draft number to be called up, he enlisted and went through basic training a year before the events of  _CA:TFA_ and was waiting for posting orders, delaying as long as possible until it was impossible. At the same time, my head!canon has it that Steve found out somewhere in this and started his whole “trying to enlist everywhere” to try to fight alongside with Bucky.

 


	19. Chapter 19

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 19_

 

“Any other options?” Coulson resisted the urge to rub his eyes as he looked around the small meeting table. Two and half hours until Strucker's bodyguards would get suspicious, if they were not already, but he was hoping it was the former rather than the latter. Things were already pear-shaped as it was and they were floundering.

“It's the only option sir,” Maria pursed her lips a little, not looking as happy as he felt, but even she could not come up with any other contingent plan that he had cooked up immediately after Natasha and Barnes were settled in Medical. Simmons, and Dr. Bruce Banner from a video link all the way in New York, were monitoring the brain activity and health of the two, and so far it seemed that both were just simply asleep.

But that was not Phil's worry as much as the potential of what was happening  _ underneath _ that sleep. He would not have put it past HYDRA or the Red Room by extension, in making hidden programming within trigger words, even though Bruce was speculating that it would be too complex to do without screwing up original programming. Simmons had added her speculation too, saying that though the human mind was complex, both Natasha and Barnes had highly developed skills that would have been compromised by additional programming on top of the ones they already had. The autonomy would have been gone as well as critical thinking and other specialized skills they each had.

It reassured him on some level, but he had been part of SHIELD, part of the intelligence agencies too long to completely put his chips in one pot. Thus, the contingent plan while Strucker was being held for the foreseeable future. He knew Strucker had information about Stark and Wilson, but wanted to make sure his plan worked before questioning the Baron further. There was also the matter of how... _ wrong _ Strucker seemed to him during the initial questioning; as if something was not quite...human about him. Maybe he was a Gifted or otherwise, but Coulson planned to bring Thor with him the next time he questioned Strucker – Thor at least would be able to fend off any potential attacks by Strucker if he was a Gifted. Currently though, Thor and Rogers had been both ordered to sleep – the two having gotten any since their arrival – Rogers longer than anyone. Maria he would have ordered to take a power nap, but she had only glared at him and Coulson was wise to the death glares she usually leveled at others – never mess with the ex-STRIKE Alpha leader upon horrific pain.

“I...can't think of anything,” Skye piped up, a frown gracing her features as May shook her head a negative next to her. Of his whole command staff, he would have figured both May and Skye would immediately come up with alternate plans, but even they had been stumped. Those two had the greatest reason – besides Simmons and Fitz – for not liking this plan.

Coulson sighed softly and accepted the inevitable. “All right. May, Triplett, you two come with me since you're going to be part of the plan. Skye, prep the surveillance van, Maria, you're mission control-”

“Phil-”

“If this plan goes south, I plan to nab Ward as soon as humanly possible. If it goes very south, you know what to do with the emergency protocols and evacuating on-site personnel,” he looked at Maria who frowned, about to protest before she nodded curtly, accepting his command. He could also see that she knew that with her being left here, there was a chance she could take the power nap and at least get a little bit of rest. He knew the current half of the Avengers, Maria unofficially part of the group, were running ragged for the past few weeks and Phil wanted to at least give them a chance to breathe, to rest, to gather themselves back together before facing the next crisis.

It was not that he did not trusted May as his second-in-command, but he would rather have May during the operation. Maria would have also done well in May's position, but she had not spent time with Grant Ward in the past two years except for brief moments.

“Understood,” Maria said and Coulson glanced at the others before gesturing for Triplett and May to follow him, the meeting adjourned as each went to do their assigned parts.

“Barnes did not say whether the two bodyguards he killed were male or female,” May commented as the three of them threaded their way to the prisoner block of the base, using the stairwell instead of the elevators.

“I know,” Coulson replied, “which is why Ward's going to tell the shade of truth – that they were killed for their incompetence in trying to prevent someone from killing him. And that he called the two of you as soon as the assassin was chased off.”

“You really think Strucker's bodyguards will buy something like that?”

“You saw how he spoke,” Coulson countered, though without any heat, “Strucker likes telling the truth in some grandiose fashion. He knows he's all but invincible in some respect, but he doesn't mince his words.”

“He sounded like a deluded madman, Director,” Triplett pointed out, “I mean, until he knocked out Barnes and Agent Romanov, the dude sounded like he was tripping high on something.”

“Which is why this plan's in effect. We need him to finish his meeting, be seen getting on the plane, and then we slip 'him' off somewhere while disabling his bodyguards. Then hopefully have some time to find out where Stark and Wilson are. Or,” he tilted his head a little, “you two ride with Ward as Strucker all the way to Austria if there's even a remote hint that he or any of his cohorts can lead you to Stark and Wilson. We'll follow and hit the place.”

“Do you really think Stark and Wilson are in Austria?” Triplett spoke up and Coulson shrugged.

“No, but HYDRA has been known to put things in obvious places for us to overlook,” he said and heard the younger agent snort in agreement, more than likely thinking about Ward or even what they had gone through in the past two years.

“Sir, if what Strucker said is true about reacquiring the Winter Soldier-”

Phil gave May a sideways look and she immediately shut up, realizing what his real plan was before a crooked smile appeared on her lips.

“What, what?” Triplett stared at the two of them as Phil punched in the codes to the prison block and the door beeped open.

“Welcome to Infiltration 201 Agent, the Bunny Hill course is over,” May directed her wry smile to Triplett who still looked confused, but seemed to resign himself to no explanation until Phil stopped and turned to the younger agent.

“It's the primary reason I'm sending both you and Melinda in. One, because the two of you know Ward the best and can anticipate him. May can help you with backup since you and Ward were Garrett's probation agents. Two, because May has a specialized skillset to extract assets from hot zones.”

“The nickname,” May interjected a little dryly and with little heat, but Coulson could see that she still did not like the nickname SHIELD had given her – The Calvary.

“Oh...” Triplett blinked as he finally got it before nodding sheepishly, “all right then. Graduated from Bunny Hill to Diamond?”

“Something like that,” Coulson shrugged and continued on his way. Triplett's skillset was scouting, not military-style, but more like casual infiltration, language building, acquiring assets and building up lines of communication. He was also a jack-of-all-trades in terms of his other skillsets, but he was more valued by SHIELD for his familial acquired abilities from his grandparents and parents, all whom were SHIELD agents. There were many reasons why Coulson would eventually bring the rest of the Avengers along if May, Triplett, and maybe Ward if he agreed to the second part of the plan, but he wanted May and Triplett to be the first ones on site – to at least get half of the work done in extracting Stark and Wilson before Cap arrived and with him, the Winter Soldier. He would keep Sergeant Barnes as far away from HYDRA as possible so that whatever Strucker had been rambling about would not come to past.

The only saving grace of Strucker using trigger words to knock out both Natasha and Barnes – aside from the worry that the words triggered other programming – was that the two were asleep and in Coulson's mind, out of the way. He would have liked to have used Natasha as a resource, especially given her mission for the past year that only he and Fury knew about, but he knew he would have to make do with what he had. Barnes, at least, was inactive for now. Though there was the worry of hidden programming, at least the only other person that could go toe-to-toe with him was near by. He knew it was a danger to Captain America, being the Winter Soldier's primary target and all, but he was also not blind to the friendship and the fact that Cap could keep Barnes grounded somewhat in reality while things were happening. He supposed it was a weird version of a Catch-22 that hopefully would eventually turn into what Natasha and Fury had between programmed target and assassin. Aside from Fury and Clint Barton, Coulson had been the only other person who knew Natasha's full history – especially the fact that she was not born in 1984 as her permanent SHIELD records indicated. He knew Maria had inklings, but also knew that Maria considered it all secondary to her former job as STRIKE Alpha's commander and Fury's bodyguard before becoming his second-in-command.

He stopped in front of the door that led into Grant Ward's home for the past year since he had him transferred from the federal prison after his first escape attempt and nodded to the guards on duty. One keyed in the passcode while the other scanned his hand and eye before the door buzzed open and he stepped in, May and Triplett following behind him.

“Well, well,” Grant Ward greeted with a lazy drawl as he sat on the floor to his cell, seemingly engrossed in a rather large three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. It was of the Empire State building and that part of the ground floor was already built. Foam pieces were scattered everywhere, but Coulson immediately noted an organization to the seemingly madness of the scattered pieces. “Been getting a lot of visitors in the past twenty-four hours...first eye-candy Hill, then you, Agent Coulson. Oh, and even Trip and May,” Ward did not even look at them, only glancing at them before returning his attention to the puzzle pieces.

The room itself was spacious, separated by bars in the middle of the room, under lock and key, but there was room for someone to walk in and sit down or even take a nap near the cell while also keeping Ward's half comfortable enough for a small table, chair, bed, and partitioned privacy of a toilet and sink. Ward was allowed a shower once a week under strict supervision and his meals provided to him twice a day with menu options to boot. Overall, a very gilded cage he had allowed his former teammate, but only because he wanted Ward to at least come to terms with who he was without orders from Agent Garrett.

“Got an assignment for you,” Coulson had talked to Ward a few times since he had him moved here, generally trying to get a feel for him since all that had happened and each time had been rebuffed to a certain extent. However, he was willing to put aside what had happened in light of what was happening now.

“Really?” Ward sounded disinterested, but Coulson easily read the opposite in his body language.

“We have need of your infiltration skills,” he smiled inwardly at the small start of surprise at his bluntness. It was one of the few things he had learned from both his psychology classes and from his days in the military. Some people were expecting one thing and so he gave them another. Ward was clearly expecting small talk and probably something that would be taken from him without consent, so Coulson did the opposite.

“And if I say no? I kind of like it here in my cell,” Ward countered, but Coulson caught the slightly too long pause in his answer.

“Then that's fine,” Coulson kept his voice even and affable as he made to leave.

“Wait,” Ward's voice was a little resigned and Coulson turned back to see him gripping a puzzle piece tightly in his hand, staring past what he had been building. “I do this...I get to walk away, scot-free.”

Coulson smiled inwardly as he approached the cell, noting that both Triplett and May had stepped back to let him negotiate. “Probation, that's the best I can offer.”

Ward looked at him sideways and smiled bitterly, shaking his head, “You want me back on the team? After what happened?”

“Well,” he gestured vaguely to May, “ _ she _ doesn't. No one does, but consider it a start.”

“I'm HYDRA-”

“You're certainly  _ not _ the worst HYDRA has to offer,” Coulson cut him off, “and definitely not the best. The best HYDRA has to offer is kind of in the middle of defecting...or at least trying to figure out how  _ not  _ to kill his programmed target.”

Ward only stared at him, confusion in his eyes and Coulson waved away his last comment, “Thing is, you know I'm offering you a chance to finally get out of the cell, maybe even a chance for you to take it and disappear after all that's done. You can probably think that somewhere along whatever mission I want to give to you that you'll just disappear, don't even care what happens to the rest of us.” He gave a small shrug, “That's great, wonderful even. Figure out what you want to do with your life and leave the rest of us in the dust. Maybe go find out what you are after John Garrett isn't holding your leash anymore.”

“Seems like all I'm good for is sitting in this cell, according to your transfer after my first escape attempt,” Ward countered, eyes narrowed at him.

“That's your prerogative,” he answered easily and saw those narrowed eyes look hooded, “I for certain know that with your skill-set, you could have easily at least attempted numerous escapes-”

“And what? Be subjected to questioning and torture by you? By May? No thanks,” Ward snorted ungracefully, “I have  _ some _ self preservation.”

“So take up this offer,” Coulson grinned inwardly at the blanching look on Ward's face, knowing he had caught him neatly into his worded trap. “Call it further self preservation if you want.”

“May and Trip gonna be accompanying me?”

“Yes, for communication and scouting purposes,” he clasped his hands behind him and rocked a little on his feet.

“You mean basically to keep me in line,” Ward eyed the two of them standing behind him and slowly stood up, raising his chin to look a little taller than he normally towered over Coulson.

“That's actually secondary,” out of the corner of his eye, Coulson could see May shift, disagreeing with his assessment, but he only waved at her with his hands behind his back and the movement stopped. “We're taking down one of HYDRA's and SHIELD's former money backers at the same time we're looking for two members of the Avengers.”

“What? Fury's little boy band...oh sorry, one girl amongst the boy band,” Ward asked, sarcasm evident in his voice, “who couldn't even stop HYDRA from taking over SHIELD and stop them from killing Fury? Wow...” He laughed, another bitter sound, “The fact that two  _ Avengers _ managed to get caught by HYDRA...why the hell should it be my problem?”

“Because I think it's about time you realize there are some truths that Agent Garrett declined to share with you when he took you under his wing all those years ago,” Coulson tugged out the surveillance photo he had Skye print out, the clearest picture of Baron von Strucker and held it in front of the bars.

Ward's reaction was immediate, the minute stiffening of his posture, though very subtle when it came to reactions; and it all but confirmed what Coulson had learned from Natasha the day before when she wanted to talk to him alone about Project Tahiti along with other information. Though he had been initially angry that such a large secret had been kept from him, especially in light of what Ward had nearly done to him, to his teammates, to SHIELD; it made more sense now that he got the full picture of who Grant Ward was, what he meant to Garrett, to Fury, and to SHIELD – and especially why he had been in the list of agents May had picked to be on his team. May might not have known who Ward really was, but  _ Fury _ had, based on Natasha's investigation.

It certainly explained a lot of the man's scores in SHIELD's internal database, his abilities second to Natasha's own, even the easy way in which he concealed his true allegiances to John Garrett until HYDRA had clawed its way out of SHIELD's shadows. In a twisted way, it also explained Fury's faith in Coulson – the same faith that insisted he was a member of the Avengers too – for apparently rehabilitating or taking former Red Room agents, even half-trained ones like Ward, under his wing to learn a more human side of themselves.

“That's...my step-father, John Bronson...” Ward blinked once before taking a step closer to the bars and his hand reached out of their own accord to grasp the photo. Coulson released it to him as he stared at it, his face expressionless. However, he could clearly see the conflict in Ward's eyes, the tightness of anger and pain. “Juvie said he was one of the survivors...along with my mom...and older brother...they were pressing charges against me when Garrett broke me out...” He looked up after a few minutes of silence, “This is recent...How...”

“His real name is Baron Wolfgang von Strucker,” Coulson never really liked seeing people's worlds shatter around them and did not like doing it, especially having it done to himself with Project Tahiti and also the fall of SHIELD, but he supposed coming out of it stronger was for the better. “Former financial backer of SHIELD, one of the people responsible for a secret HYDRA project called the Red Room, and we think current leader behind HYDRA pulling the strings and orchestrating the capture of two Avengers.”

“Red Room?” Ward had stared back down at the picture, but had looked up at him again when he said those words.

“Know something about it?” Coulson tilted his head, but Ward suddenly had a sharp look in his eyes.

“Maybe,” the younger man answered, “but tell me first, we're going after...Strucker?”

“No, we have him in custody. We need  _ you _ to cover for his absence at a business conference and gala tonight,” Coulson knew he was revealing his hand, but Ward seemed accept it and nod once.

“Probation?” he asked again and received a confirming nod from him. Ward breathed out a loud sigh and seemed to war with something in him before puffing his cheeks out in a long exhale and handed the photo back.

“The Red Room is what Uncle Karpov used to say in between his Russian ramblings to Dad—er, to John, Strucker, that guy,” Ward gestured roughly to the photo, “Red Room this, Red Room that, glory days of the Red Room, recreation and whatnot. I didn't understand the Russian coming out of him, didn't really care for it, but Uncle Karpov just seemed...a bit batty and crazy at times.”

“Karpov?” Coulson asked, latching onto the name.

“I think...Vasily was his first name? Didn't really like him growing up...he just seemed...off somehow,” Ward pressed his lips into a tight thin line, “What's this about, really? Does Uncle, err, does Karpov have something to do with Strucker? With all of whatever the hell is going on? The attack yesterday?”

“What do you know about the attack?” May suddenly interrupted before Coulson could get his hand up to stop her from saying anything and saw Ward's eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.

“What are the conditions for my probation?” he countered, his smile a little stilted, but Coulson could clearly see him trying to think fast with what he knew versus what he could negotiate with. However, he also knew that Ward had already revealed his hand too early with the photo – not because of whom Strucker had posed as, his father – but because there was always something personal when one grasped at a photo and stared at it like nothing else in the world mattered.

He knew he could press his advantage, deflect the question, but also knew just as well that in the long run, Ward's cooperation and perhaps starting down the path of finding out who he was without John Garrett, would bear more fruit than denying him information at the moment. Coulson was not inclined to trust Ward, not after what he had pulled or done, but the foundations started somewhere – and he supposed there  _ was  _ a reason why Fury had assigned Ward to his team, besides the obvious about Tahiti.

“Armed escort each day except for one hour, which will be randomly decided. Guards rotated so you don't become too friendly with one. You'll be allowed to do some light missions with the small teams until you can be trusted with other ones,” Coulson offered and saw Ward's gaze close a little as he shook his head.

“Sounds like a gilded cage,” he bit back a little sarcastically.

“It's better than breathing stale air,” Coulson replied with a pointed look around his cell, “for now, like I said earlier, we need your skill set to cover Strucker through tonight's gala.”

“And after?” Ward's eyes darted to the corners, looking at May and Triplett, “These two going to be my handlers? S.O's?”

“Their cover is to bodyguard you-as-Strucker,” he gave a non-committal shrug, “in our extraction of Strucker we had to eliminate two of his bodyguards.”

Ward seemed to accept this with a silent nod and Coulson was struck at how  _ Ward-like _ it was, before he had been revealed as part of HYDRA. Just how much of his actual self he had put into his cover before it was blown? Coulson was no stranger that a hint of truth within a lie was much easier to swallow and tell than just a complete lie. He was also not a stranger to handling Natasha and Clint amongst other agents in their field ops and knew what they went through for their covers, but he was still sometimes taken aback at how easily agents like Romanov and Ward did it – heck had been shocked at how  _ easily _ Barnes slipped into the shadows or held a normal conversation when the need arose.

Maybe that was the real fear of the Red Room...maybe that was what they had been aiming for. Normal, unassuming people with guile, charisma, everything a  _ normal _ person would have about themselves; only to suddenly reveal a terrifying nature of deadliness just underneath, that death was just a blink and maybe a smile, away.

“Can you tell me one thing, Coulson,” Ward asked quietly his voice the sincerest Coulson had ever heard, “just one thing. If my stepdad is Strucker, and Strucker is behind HYDRA and all of this...Red Room, whatever you want with Uncle Karpov...what...” He did not even finish the question as he trailed off and Coulson could see Grant Ward's world continue to crumble around him.

It shattered once with the death of John Garrett, but that was adulthood. This was Ward's childhood shattering into fine little pieces before him and somehow Ward knew that something was very wrong with it. “Dad...John, John Bronson,” Ward started softly, “I hated him...even my older brother James hated him after a fashion, but he did as he was told, was probably afraid of him. Hurt his left arm with some electrical shock thing, the one he kept in a glove the whole time I grew up there... But that doesn't forgive the fact that James  _ murdered _ our younger brother Stevie...left him to drown in the well one day, stopped me from trying to save him. Mom didn't do anything, couldn't...she was too afraid of John.”

He looked up and Coulson saw the hatred in his eyes, hatred for what had been done in his childhood, what he should have done in his childhood; hatred for himself, for his older brother, for his stepfather, mother, Uncle... Enough for him to run away one thousand miles to Plymouth, Massachusetts to a junior military school, then suddenly go back to the place he grew up in and blow the place sky high. “I'm guessing I fucked up a HYDRA plan when I blew the place up, if what you say about Bronson, about Strucker is true...” He shook his head, leaning against the bars with a bitter laugh light on his lips, “The irony is killing me here...”

Coulson was good at reading people, was good at making them do what he wanted, what he hoped they could do to better themselves, but he was no sadist, did not take pleasure in watching people break and try to rebuild themselves with scattered pieces of the truth in front of them. Fury liked to keep that part of himself close, but Coulson believed more in a sort of open way of helping to gather the pieces together, help put people back together; that even if he was harsh with them, manipulated them, made them avenge his death because they were destined for a far greater purpose than he, he wanted to let them know that he was always with them – if not physically there, but in spirit.

“You, probably your younger brother Steve if he was still alive, were to be trained by HYDRA to be the newest incarnation of Project Black Widow. Except instead of the Cold War Russia versus United State mentality, it was the world of home grown terrorists, of mass school shootings, of random attacks on U.S. citizens on their soil...all in the name of freedom,” he could see the metaphoric wheels churning in Ward's head, at his childhood memories, what he had done as a HYDRA mole, and most of all what he had done after he had joined with John Garrett. “The Red Room would have been the codename.”

“...Shit...” Ward breathed out quietly, his face unreadable as he slowly shook his head, “...shit...geez...” He looked at Coulson for a long moment before shaking his head again, “You're not joking...”

“For all I know, you gave me bullshit on your childhood story,” Coulson saw Ward flinch at his words and knew that he had all but stripped away a lot of the haughty armor, the irony and bitterness that the former SHIELD agent had worn around him in the aftermath of the death of John Garrett and the halting of whatever plans he had. “But it's not bullshit, not with my sources-”

“Strucker?” Ward suddenly snarled. “Where the hell is he?! I'm going to-”

“You're going to impersonate Strucker and help us find intel and information regarding the whereabouts of the two missing Avengers,” he interrupted sharply, clasping his hands in front of him and saw Ward's eyes narrow defensively ready to protest again before he gave him a rare wolfish smile, “after that...well...I did say one hour unsupervised, didn't I? Probation and all...”

There was a moment's pause before Ward's face suddenly broke out into a similar smile and he nodded congenially. “Of course...I'd be remiss to call you out on such negotiation of my  _ probation _ .” He lost the smile and squared his shoulders, staring at him with a sharp look, “If you will, Agent Phillip J. Coulson, I will take the mission you offer.”

Phil smiled and reached into his jacket and pulled out the chameleon-skin mask that Natasha had worn during her impersonation of Councilwoman Hawley of the WSC. It was already uploaded with a full rendering and compositing of Strucker's face and held it out to Ward. “Welcome back to SHIELD Probationary Agent Grant Ward.”

* * *

“I noticed you didn't tell him about Sergeant Barnes pretending to be his older brother James during his childhood,” Maria murmured quietly on a private channel over the earpiece and radio that he was patched into.

It was an hour later and Phil and Skye were watching in the nearby survaillance van as Ward, May, and Triplett walked into the front door of the hotel lobby. Ward was not wearing a wire, but one of the many pins on his military-cut suit he wore was a microphone keyed into their frequency. May and Triplett wore wires and microphones as per their roles as bodyguards, but due to the risky nature, they were patched into their own frequency to communicate with each other. If they needed to communicate with the survaillance team or even with him, there were other ways to signal that they needed help or a quick extraction.

The bodyguards sitting in the lobby for the night had already begun to get suspicious. Coulson had noted that with Skye's camera feeds even before they had left the base and knew that they were treading a very fine line here. If the bodyguards did not accept that Ward was Strucker then they would have to move fast, neutralize the threat of the bodyguards in an effort to not alert HYDRA. Phil did not know what HYDRA protocols were, but he was pretty sure that they at least had check-ins if living under the shadow of SHIELD all this time had turned them this way.

“Need to know basis, let me know if there are any leads on Vasily Karpov,” he replied easily before switching back to the more 'public' frequency the team as a whole was using. It was simple really, Ward did not need to know about the Winter Soldier currently holed up in Medical, nor did he want any potential hostility towards the Winter Soldier in his current state. Eventually he would tell him, but he trusted the Winter Soldier more than Ward to let Barnes regain some more memories and continue the process of deprogramming himself.

“Heads up, they've been noticed,” Skye murmured from where she sat hunched in her seat in the back of the van. Coulson sat near her, watching the same camera feeds, their driver pretending he was a delivery man taking a quick nap or occasionally leaving to 'deliver' packages while doing a perimeter sweep.

“ _ And have the two of you enjoyed your nap? _ ” Ward's voice had been overlaid with a minor piece of electronic flimsy strip to make him sound a little more gutteral, a little closer to Strucker's own voice while keeping a natural sound. Coulson's German was a little rusty, but he made out the general gist of what Ward was saying.

“ _ Sir _ ,” Ward, Melinda, and Triplett's mics picked up the shuffling sound of the two bodyguards rising from their place of watch as the security cameras also showed them approaching the trio. Both bodyguards looked rather wary, hands already diving into the coats to pull out their guns even though it was still a very public place.

“ _ I escape an assassination attempt at night to find that  _ neither  _ of you idiots have even noticed or made to stop the assassins _ ,” there was definitely a hint of anger in Ward's voice as he played Strucker and Coulson once again marveled at how easily the younger man had slipped into the role. His picking of Ward was not only for him to see what the young agent could do after a year without John Garrett behind him, but because Ward was of similar height and build of Baron von Strucker.

“ _ Sir- _ ”

“ _ I should have the two of you killed in place of the two that were killed. They, at least, were competent enough to wound the assassin _ ,” he glared through the chameleon mask, “ _ SHIELD knows. One of you will make it unknown. _ ” There was a slight chilling smile on the corners of his lips, “ _ The other... _ ”

The reaction was immediate as the female bodyguard's arm was a blur and a spray of quick blood before her compatriot choked and fell to the ground dead. Those in the lobby gasped while several others made to call the police before Ward raised his hand up, looking around. “ _ Nothing to see here, just some loose ends that needed to be tied up _ ,” he smiled congenially before saying in a loud voice directed more towards the remaining bodyguard, “ _ corporate assassinations are unbecoming of this day and age, friend _ .”

Some in the lobby who apparently attended the business conference started to nod and accept his explanation while others were still leery and wary of what had just happened. Ward looked at the lone remaining bodyguard, “ _ Clean up this mess. You will receive no second chances. I want you to find out what SHIELD knows _ .”

“ _ Yes sir, _ ” the female bodyguard nodded curtly before Ward headed to the elevators with May and Triplett following him, both of whom kept their stony faces.

“I can't believe it went that easy,” Skye muttered next to him, “seriously? He's...” She made a frustrated sound of annoyance and Coulson looked at her out of the corner of her eye.

He could see why she would have thought it would be easy, how the bodyguard was convinced to quickly kill her compatriot and follow Ward's lead. To someone who did not know much about the Red Room and how their operatives operated, it looked almost  _ too _ easy. But Coulson knew better, knew that Ward had just turned in the best performance of his life, especially with however much training he had received from Barnes, Strucker and whomever else visited his “family” unit before he ran away. There were also no known signals that Coulson had Natasha teach him when she had defected, that passed between Ward and the bodyguard, so it at least gave him some relief that Ward was serious about this and not about to stab them in the back again – at least for now. That was why he had May specifically assigned as one of his bodyguards, he passed down the knowledge he had from Natasha and hoped that she would be able to utilize it if things went south.

“How are the others reacting?” he instead, deflected her question by making her focus back on the security cameras as the elevators closed on Ward, May, and Triplett.

“That...was easy...” Triplett's microphone picked up his quiet murmur before there was the barest of an undignified snort from Ward's.

“See? Even Trip thinks it was easy-”

“Can you alter the recording light without affecting the camera feed itself in the elevator?” Coulson interrupted her and she brought up a command window and typed a few lines of code before glancing at him.

“Yeah, need to send a message?” she asked, instantly getting what he was asking.

“Morse,” he replied and she typed a few more commands before moving a little to the side so that he could at least reach over into the small cramped space. The sound of the door opening and closing up front told him that their driver was making another 'delivery' after having woken up from his nap.

“Just tap the 'M' key for whatever you want to send out AC,” Skye instructed and Coulson did just that. A few seconds later there was a shuffle from Ward as he made to clear his throat and adjust his suit's shoulders and lapels. He seemed to absently brush invisible dirt away, but Coulson could see that the unspoken hand signals, a modified mix of what the Red Room used and some of what belonged to SHIELD itself when assets were out in the field.

Ward stopped fiddling as the elevator slowed to a stop on the fourteenth floor as he squared his shoulders and walked out, May and Triplett following him like silent shadows.

“Maria, send a team top side, southwest park entrance in ten minutes for pick up. Make it quiet,” he said calmly over the comm.

“Roger that,” Hill replied easily as her voice briefly cut off with a click of switching comm channels to give orders for a small tactical SHIELD team to intercept the trajectory and direction the remaining bodyguard was going to head towards them.

Though Coulson already knew which direction the bodyguard was heading based on the hotel route in relation to the base, it was the timing and speed he needed from Ward. They had briefed Ward regarding the bodyguards and he was pleased to see that the young agent had still retained some of his skills, whether it was from his pseudo-Red Room training days, the Academy, or even his short stint at the local military academy near Plymouth.

“You know, I joined a spy agency and I still don't get half of the spy thingies that just happened,” Skye chewed her lower lip in a crooked, but incredulous smile on her face, as Coulson sat back to let her monitor the security cameras again.

“May did offer to teach you,” he shrugged and Skye laughed lightly.

“At the same time she also offered to teach me wushu, which meant that she was probably going to kick my ass all over the place and maybe I'll be able to pick up on none of the subtle signals she was trying to teach me,” she shot back and Coulson grinned.

“Brazilian jiu-jitsu,” he offered and Skye rolled her eyes, “or you could learn krav maga from Agent Romanov-”

“ _ No  _ thank you,” Skye shook her head rapidly, a terrified grin on her face, “I'd like to live a little longer.”

Coulson chuckled before patting her on the shoulder consolingly, “I'll set you some lessons with Agent Hill after all of this is over. Aikido is her forte and it's less punishing than most martial arts besides Tai Chi.” He saw Skye look a little happier before adding, “You're still having signal lessons with May.” He saw her face fall and bury her head in her hands, a small groan escaping her. He only smiled, glad for the brief respite of humor before turning his attention back to the cameras, his mind focusing back on the mission at hand. Step One was over...now was the hard part – waiting until Step Two could be enacted after the gala. He hoped that there was at least something Maria would have dug up on this mysterious Vasily Karpov that also knew about the Red Room, in the interim.

* * *

** Author's Notes: **

I  _ like _ Agent Coulson...just not exactly how he's kind of taken over this story. At least it's keeping with the outline I've had, just occasionally some deviations. Hilairiously enough, I never really took a shine to Grant Ward, even with his Face-Heel-Turn as a HYDRA agent. Of course, I also have a tendency to make characters with slightly interesting backgrounds become far more interesting (I am not to blame if you end up carrying parts of this chapter into your headcanon – no I am not to blame.).

 


	20. Chapter 20

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 20_

 

Tony awoke drenched, the acrid stale smell of burnt hot metal mingled with his own body's sweat. For a second, he felt the rising panic of darkness enclosed around him before his mind caught up with what he was seeing through twin pinpoints of light that cast shadows under his eyes. Still alive then, still not out of his armor. He swallowed dryly, feeling the parched scrape of his throat even though the humidity inside his armor could theoretically given him moisture. “Release Extremis,” he all but whispered and winced at the feel and tug of something pulling against his skin around his stomach and hips before the cool contact of his wet underarmor touched his skin once more.

It worked, it really worked and had been working since...well, Tony did not really know how much time had passed, but it kept working – and that was the most important part. That it keep working and working and working... “Hey Bird Boy...” he croaked out as he sub-vocalized a command to at least bring up the water filtration system and took a sip of the recycled water his suit was capable of producing. Though the latest technology was capable of doing such a thing, Tony had based his more on the so-called 'stillsuits' from the book  _ Dune _ – even though there was no conceivable explanation by author Frank Herbert – having been fascinated by the description of the sleekness, almost skin-tight suits that also was capable of holding a water recycling and filtration system.

His HUD stayed dark except for a minor pop-up at the far corner of his screen and he mouthed the straw, sipping gingerly on the mildly hot water. He did not know how much longer the filtration system could last and could already taste a weird plastic, metal taste in the water itself. Something had probably melted a little during the last go-around, which meant he needed to try to distribute the Extremis more evenly next time to conserve sweat and not be dehydrated in the aftermath.

“Stark, you awake?” the sounds of shuffling muffled by his helmet was soon replaced by the welcomed sight of Sam Wilson standing as best as he could in front of where he thought he could see him.

“Yeah,” he replied and wanted to add a quip, but was too tired with exhaustion and partial dehydration to even say anything, “you okay?”

“Should be asking you that. They gave me everything but ice to cool down the armor,” Sam held up a giant red bag with a cross on it. Tony noticed out of his limited vision that Sam looked battered and bruised, but otherwise still seemed untouched since the last time he had passed out and woken up.

“You sound the same,” he quipped lightly and saw Sam smile tiredly.

“They know I'm not the valuable one. Using that Chitauri sceptre on me is useless,” Sam seemed almost depressed by it before giving him a bracing smile, “I'm thinking it's a good thing right now. Bit insulting, but a good thing.”

“Yeah...kind of messes with your head when you're not careful even if you're not near it,” Tony gave a grimacing smile in return, but knew that Sam could not see it.

“Still have your head on straight?” he could hear the worry behind the innocuous question and snorted quietly.

“Never have my head on straight,” he replied blithely, wondering what he had been muttering this time around. It also told him that their captors had left the Chitauri sceptre near their shared cell once more. He did not know how many hours had passed, how many days even, but he counted time now with the instance of passing out and waking up drenched in sweat and the smell of ozone and metal filling his nostrils – or the worst thing that could happen, not waking up at all and instead, watching as his body moved while he was a prisoner inside it, finding himself outside the protective environment of his suit.

He remembered being unable to breathe, the seconds of panic filling him before he had all but blacked out after an explosion ripped the Learjet apart. He then had awakened with his on-board computers screaming warnings at him at the internal temperature and integrity of the suit was malfunctioning. JARVIS had been unresponsive, somehow cut off from his main HUD, and he manually activated the last resort protocol – one he  _ knew _ Pepper would kill him for if she ever found out about – and the nano machines of the Extremis virus flooded towards the stomach area of his body where the rising temperature of metal was bypassing his somewhat thermal absorbent under armor. It formed a barrier against the superheated metal and shut down the auto-release protocols of the suit as it countered the heat with its own.

The virus he had put into himself before having the metal shards surgically removed from his heart enabled an accelerated healing factor, but also had been altered so that it formed barriers around certain spots, interconnected with the neurological component of Extremis itself. He had not told Pepper about that part, only stating to her that he had programmed Extremis to just have accelerated healing.

He eventually was going to integrate it with the Mk. III-Z suit that he was working on; based on Rhodey's experiences with an Extremis soldier burning him out of the Iron Patriot-War Machine armor when he was captured by AIM. It was to provide a barrier against any Extremis soldier that attacked him – or Centipede soldier, to have an extra protective layer against their abilities to channel molten lava like temperatures. There was no metal on Earth that he could smelt into the Iron Man suits that could protect against Extremis and this was the best stop-gap he could come up with for now – until maybe he and Thor could somehow work out a trade agreement with Asgard for their types of metal.

But the integration into the Mk. III-Z armor had taken him the last two-and-half years, Extremis being extremely tricky to manipulate even with a lot of the coding and formulas worked out. The first thing he had done was to help remove it from Pepper's body, at least some of the more dangerous aspects, but even that was still a work in progress. As far as the world knew, Pepper Potts had never been infected with Extremis, and would never know unless some idiotic person decided to attack her, and that was fine by Pepper and Tony. And as far as Pepper knew, he was still working on experiments to try to remove Extremis from her without killing her. Bruce had actually been helping in that department, seeing the accelerated healing factor of Extremis as a benefit to help wounded vets. Tony had not busied himself with much of the details, but he knew it involved the barrier cure Loki had created two years ago for Jormungandr's poison and something with Bruce tinkering with the biological component of Extremis. He was more concerned about using it to ensure a defensive component against Extremis and Centipede soldiers.

And part of him was really grateful for his own hindsight. He was still stuck in his armor and no one had been able to burn him out of it and use the Chitauri sceptre on him.

“Still sitting the last time evil-overlord-grandpa left it?” he asked clearing his throat lightly to get some moisture in it. He would have taken another sip of water if the original sip did not taste like half-melted plastic-like tubing.

“Still sitting there,” Sam replied, almost with an edge to his voice, “fucking hate that thing...”

“Better than hating whatever's going on in your head,” he replied lightly and heard the dark snort of laughter, “still blaming me for EXO-Falcon wings?”

“...Sorry,” the darkness that had been present in Sam's tone last go around was not audible in Tony's ears and he resisted the urge to sigh. He vaguely remembered the last time someone had been trying to burn him out of his armor, it had involved a very heated argument between him and Sam, the Chitauri sceptre influencing their thoughts, twisting to bring forth all of their slights and faults.

“Hang in there buddy,” he said, trying to keep his voice light. He was not good at this, at the mercy and hostage with psycho manics that captured them. Yinsen had died the last time something like this had happened and though he was pretty sure that Sam could take care of himself, it was the worry that gnawed at him; the five-million and plus scenarios of everything that could go wrong that played itself out like tripped up hallucinations. He knew it was the PTSD, but knowing what it was did not stop it. Suppressing it made it worst, but neither could he let Sam know that he was five seconds away from having a very bad panic attack or was going to lose it because of what he was imagining. It also did not help that he had his suspicions that the Chitauri sceptre was somehow subtly influencing all of this too, amplifying it.

Harley Keener's simple words to 'fix' whatever the problem is by fixing the solution was not an option; not with his arms spread eagle and in chains. He knew he could easily rip the chains off, but with his suit suffering from heat overload, the on-board computers malfunctioning from repeated heat exposure, there was no way for him to activate the manual overrides, not with trying to keep his focus while also keeping the Extremis where he needed it to be – protecting him. He tried to 'fix' the problems, fix the PTSD by running through formulas in his head, running through other iterations of Iron Man armor, through improvements on the Winter Soldier's mechanized arm, through Sam's EXO Falcon flightsuit, anything and everything.

But the damn Chitauri sceptre had twisted those thoughts, spiraling them down to how he had given a lot of his tech to SHIELD, to HYDRA living within SHIELD. How they had stolen them, used it, try to use it against him, how the Winter Soldier's kill file had just been there for him to see, to pick through, but he had not because of his respect to Steve. How HYDRA had killed his parents, because maybe, maybe his father knew too much – was that why he had been so distant back then? Maybe it Obie-Obediah Stane had been in cahoots with HYDRA all along? Were the Ten Rings affliated with HYDRA? The Mandarin? Aldrich Killian and AIM? Was that why Project Centipede had a variation of Extremis? Could he not have seen this? He should have seen this when he had searched through Fury's files on the Helicarrier; should have known that all good things were not really good – that there was evil in the world and  _ his _ , Tony Stark's technology was always dipped in blood, dripping in it. That he was always going to be a war monger, sending good men and women to die on the front lines because maybe their technology was corrupted; maybe that was why Riley died, because he could not safeguard his technology-

“-ony! Tony! Stark! STARK!”

Tony twitched and opened eyes he had not known he had closed, finding his breath ragged as if he had run several marathons, the heat and humidity inside his suit not withstanding.

“Riley's death is not your fault,  _ was not _ your fault,” Sam continued in a steady voice and Tony sagged inside his suit. He immediately understood what had happened and shook his head, even though Sam could not see it.

“Shit...sorry,” he apologized roughly as he tried to marshal his thoughts to a more positive light, focusing on Pepper, on JARVIS, on his robotic arms, anything and everything to try to pull himself from sinking into the despairing, dark thoughts of his own mind. They were going to get out of this...they were going to. He was goddamn Tony Stark and he was going to get them out of this.

“I fucking hate that sceptre,” he muttered a little more audibly and heard a tired chuckle from Sam in the cell next to where he hung.

“Don't we all,” Sam agreed gently, “positive light in all of this? They haven't tried to stab us with it.”

“Why would I kill you when both of you are far more useful to me alive?” Tony involuntarily jerked a bit in surprise at the sudden intrusion of the grandfatherly voice. An uncomfortable feeling wormed its way through his gut that he realized was the beginnings of dread. He grimaced inside the suit, a part of him wondering if the dread had been manipulated by the proximity of the Chitauri sceptre to them or had he truly begun to dread the voice that always heralded a renewed round of heat, exhaustion, pain, and him trying to keep his mind focused to direct Extremis to do what it needed to do to keep him in the suit.

“Thought you wanted the suit intact, Karpov,” he could not see the speaker of the grandfatherly tone, but it did not mean that Vasily Karpov was nearby.

“Oh, I still do, but perhaps it would be easier to melt it off, extract whatever remains of you, and make you repair your suit before putting you back inside to do my work,” there was a flash of color before Karpov's face appeared in Tony's limited vision. A kind smile was on the wrinkled face that split the white-haired goatee into something akin to a nightmarish version of Santa Claus. Karpov look positively old, but Tony could still see something keen, something  _ dangerous  _ and improbably  _ ancient _ in the bald old man's gaze. Vasily Karpov was someone not to be trifiled with and it was someone that Tony had never heard of until his capture.

“Well...good luck getting my limbs to work if you end up melting those off,” Tony quipped lightly, “I'm pretty sure the sceptre doesn't regrow limbs.”

“Nonsense,” Karpov's smile widened just a hair and he shook his head, “it would be easy to give you new prosthetic, perhaps make it even far better than your own suit.” He looked to the side as if contemplating the idea, “We have done it to great success...” Karpov looked back, “After all, the Winter Soldier was one of my greatest creations.”

“Well,” Tony reeled at the implication that this old man had created the Winter Soldier. He would have banked on him being at least eighty or something, but whatever he was implying, meant that he was at least as old, if not older, than Barnes. “Well,” he repeated again, “seems like you're pretty spry for an older fellow who created Terminator or something like that. You must have been reading a little too much about the robot-pocalypse, maybe even a little too much Asimov-”

“Your bravado suits you, Mr. Stark,” Karpov nodded approvingly, “but it will not help you in the end-”

“You're not getting me out of my suit-”

“Yes, yes,” Karpov waved an absent hand, “I merely jested. I have no desire to create a new limb for you, as much as the creation process was to behold – I do not have the necessary resources anymore nor the metals left without stealing them from the vaults.”

“Got a secret lair elsewhere, gramps?” Sam jumped in sarcastically, “'cause you know, we kind of like taking the tech HYDRA stole from SHIELD.”

“Oh no, dear boy, it is not HYDRA technology nor SHIELD's,” Karpov looked to where Sam was, “that technology stolen belonged to me. As does this...” Tony saw him reach out of his limited field of vision before he retrieved the Chitauri sceptre, turning it in his hands as if to examine it. A quiet, resigned sigh escaped the old man's lips, “Silly of the stupid boy to leave it here with your kind. But, the subtlest of manipulations in a geas are lost on him sometimes, which I suppose is a saving grace after all.”

Tony's mind screeched to a halt at the word. No one,  _ no one _ , except for perhaps the members of the Avengers, save for Sam, Fury, who was dead, Maria Hill, and Coulson, ever said the word  _ geas _ in context of what Karpov had said. It was something that all of them innately knew  _ not _ to speak of only because it was just too twisted, too uncomfortable to be spoken of. It was not in the context of the person in question, but rather it was something that not even their current technology or  _ Asgard's _ for that matter could comprehend what a geas was.

Karpov's head suddenly jerked up, his eyes staring past a distant point where Tony thought he was seeing something  _ not _ in the room. A frown graced Karpov's weathered features before he smiled a little, “Ah...perhaps all is not lost.”

He set the sceptre down again and inclined his head at them, “I apologize for cutting our little chat so short, but it seems that there is a situation I must take advantage of.”

Tony's brain started up again and he strained against his armor, making the chains holding him up shake and rattle. “Wait! Wait!” he shouted and saw Karpov turn back, a mild, almost amused look on his face.

“What is it Mr. Stark?” Karpov asked.

“You're not from this planet, are you, Karpov?”

Karpov's mild look turned a little more alien as he smiled just so and Tony knew he was right.

“I have lived a very long life, Mr. Stark,” the bald man absently scratched his salt and pepper-colored goatee, “a  _ very _ long life. The schemes and manipulation of you mortals were nothing but child's play for me. I would have thought that many more would have asked such an impudent question like you had. But you, you, are one of the few to have asked me that question.” The  _ ancient _ look suddenly reappeared in his eyes as he stared at him and Tony recoiled; the expanse of fear, of dread that was most certainly definitely  _ not _ influenced by the Chitauri sceptre filling him, burning through him like being burned by Extre-no, it was not being burned by Extremis, but it  _ felt  _ like being burned by something that held him at bay, something that rooted him to the spot. It felt so familiar yet so alien and foreign that he could not help but think that icy cold blue eyes, alien eyes,  _ Mad Titan _ eyes were behind that powerful force, controlling from deep within, a being within a being that was Karpov. He did not like the look, wanting nothing more than to take back what he said, to keep his mouth shut-

“I am Vasily Karpov, Mr. Stark. I am him, and I am much more,” the look suddenly disappeared, but Tony was still not convinced, staring at their captor with a wariness that had not been there before. Karpov smiled again, “For your boldness, you and the flightless one will be allowed to recuperate for a little longer.”

The old man swept out of the room, the door shutting behind them and Tony let out a quiet ragged breath that he did not know he was holding. He somehow could feel a lessening of despair and realized that somehow Karpov had pushed away whatever made the Chitauri sceptre work the way it did.

“Stark, what the fuck is going on?” Sam's chains jingled a little, “seriously? Is the dude not from this world? From Earth? And if not, where the hell is he from?”

“Short answer?” Tony kept staring at the area where Karpov had stood, “I have no fucking idea. Even shorter answer? We are so...so, so very screwed if it's what I think it is...”

“And...? Wanna fill me in?”

“I think Karpov is somehow connected to Thanos.”

* * *

He did not need to feel the mental nudge in his mind to know that he had been summoned. From his perch high in the air ducts of the the prison cell block, he had seen everything. There was nothing he could do for Tony or for the man known as Sam Wilson, but he could at least send the mental vibes of encouragement and be the silent presence above them hopefully somehow bolstering their strength and mental fortitude. The fact that he  _ knew _ Tony had something up his sleeve to prevent himself from being burned out of his armor made it much easier for him to keep his watch on them. And at least there was the saving grace that no one had used the sceptre on Wilson. He supposed it was probably Karpov's arrogance that Wilson was beneath him to control with the sceptre that saved the former pararescue from being a mindless drone.

He ignored the mental nudge, as he made his way out of the vents and dropped down into one of the hallways, startling a couple of HYDRA soldiers on patrol who straightened as they realized who he was.

“Sir,” they greeted him and he nodded back as he made his way towards where he could  _ feel _ the compulsion rolling off of Karpov.

He had never really been a good actor, hell, there were others who were much better at him, including Natasha, but in face of something like this, it was somehow extremely  _ easy _ for him to ignore the compulsions, ignore the subtle...magic was probably the best word...he knew was at work around the man known as Vasily Karpov. And he  _ hated _ it. Hated that he had to do this, hated for all that had happened, but also knew that of his friends, his teammates, he was the  _ only one _ who was capable of doing it. It was a skill set he had acquired and not particularly discovered and utilized until Loki's second visit post-Battle for New York.

“You called?” he found Karpov seemingly standing still in an observation room overlooking a sterile medical area. Another man with the bearing of a lord or baron walked in the area below, peering at his two subjects, a male and female, patting them on their shoulders or muttering reassurances as scientists around them injected liquids or set up intravenous lines around them.

“Strucker seems to be making progress with his attempt at an Age of Miracles, do you not think?” Karpov gestured to the military uniform-dressed man. He wore a monocle over one eye, compensating for a weaker eye, as he continued to peer at charts and at computer readouts.

“The twins need rest after what they went through the last round,” he countered and saw Karpov turn his head slightly to look back at him, “just speaking my piece.”

“Still soft-hearted?”

“You keep poking them with needles and the next time they are let out, people are going to think that they're druggies and  _ avoid _ them, not go towards them,” he countered and the old man nodded.

“Hmm, yes, I do seem to forget these trivial details,” he shrugged, “No matter, I will let Strucker know to ease off on the process for now.” There was a flash of something in his eyes, still too quick for him to follow, but he saw Strucker jerk as if struck before a frown graced his features. The Baron heaved a visible sigh, seemingly disappointed before issuing new orders to the scientists around him.

Task done, Karpov turned his head slightly to look at him, his weathered old eyes looking utterly benign and grandfatherly, “I have received information about the location of the SHIELD base in London. The good Baron's mirror has been captured by the Winter Soldier himself. The team sent last time reported back that there were multiple entry points designed to confuse intruders.”

“Never said Phil Coulson was an idiot,” he shrugged and saw the glimmer of a smile on Karpov's lips as he turned his head fully to face him.

“Which is why I want you to lead the team,” the older man's gaze bore into him, as if trying to peel him apart from the inside, but he ignored it.

Instead, he answered, “What do you want me to do?”

“Bring my weapon back, of course,” Karpov answered, “and if the rest shall follow, then stop them, by any means necessary.”

“Killing Captain America, Black Widow, and the agents Coulson has with them won't be an easy task,” he pointed out.

“Then use the resources you have as distractions,” Karpov answered in a simple tone, “it is why I am sending you. You are expendable and so infinitely useful at the same time.”

He snorted silently, understanding what the older man meant. Expendable because if he succeeded, then there was nowhere for him to run for the Winter Soldier to not hunt him down. Useful because no one would see him coming, no one would see the betrayal he would commit.

“You willing to let me off my leash?” he allowed a crooked smile to grace his lips.

“You have done well so far,” Karpov's boring gaze seemed to come to a silent conclusion, “it is far better than the brute force suppression that had been expended upon you by that runt of a Jotun magister three years ago. Besides, you yourself know that you are the weapon that can only be used once before being discarded.”

“If you say so,” he shrugged, seemingly nonchalant, as he blinked once, “I'm going to need full tactical command and gear.”

“You will have it. I will arrange for two teams to meet you in London.”

“The weapon you only use once, right?” he tilted his head a little before heading out of the observation room. He had opened the door before he heard Karpov shift behind him.

“Oh, Agent Barton?”

He paused at the threshold in between the door and the hallway. “Yeah?”

“ _Good luck_ ,” Karpov said in Russian. He nodded once in acknowledgment before walking out of the room, the door sliding close behind him. Seconds later, he heard the screams of the twins echo beyond the door as Karpov ordered Strucker to start the experiment back up. But Clint Barton knew that there was nothing more he could do for the twins. However, for Tony Stark and Sam Wilson, he could still do more; certainly not free them, not with legions of HYDRA soldiers around them, but at least stall Karpov from getting to his endgame.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Oh hey! The last of the Avengers showed up in this chapter! And before anyone asks, no the Maximoff twins are _not_ playing any role in this story. They're just there for cameo purposes.

 


	21. Chapter 21

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 21_

 

It was only when the pencil clattered softly to the ground did Steve jerk and twitch in his seat, opening eyes he did not know he had closed. A second later, he realized that he had actually  _ fallen _ asleep in front of Bucky and and quick glance at Bucky showed that his best friend was impossibly  _ still asleep _ . He covered the sudden yawn that emerged from his lips as he reached over and picked up the fallen pencil, setting it aside on a small end table he had commandeered as soon as both Bucky and Natasha were considered stabilized and had been allowed in. Coulson had all but ordered him to sleep as soon as his friends had been rushed to Medical. He had protested, but the Director had been adamant that his presence would be a detriment and danger to Simmons and her team before they could find out what Strucker had done to disable them.

He had reluctantly agreed and returned to the temporary quarters he had been assigned, but really had not slept a wink until Coulson had appeared at his door telling him that Hill was in charge while he oversaw the op to replace Strucker. He had then given him an update on Bucky and Natasha's status, saying that Simmons and Banner, being consulted by video link from New York, had come to the conclusion that both Bucky and Natasha were asleep. Both Simmons and Bruce had been mostly sure that the trigger word did not do anything else, Bruce stating that the fine-tune programming of the Red Room probably did not warrant additional programming to alter what was already done to them. Steve had been allowed to visit his friends and he had parked himself there, confident that if something went wrong with the op Coulson was running, Maria would contact him from the war room.

He checked the clock in the room and saw that it was at least several hours since he had arrived and at least a few hours since he had last checked the clock before apparently falling asleep in his chair. His friends were still asleep and while Steve was worried for them, worried that maybe Bruce and Simmons were wrong in their analysis; he took the fact that he was actually able to sleep in front of Bucky without his friend attempting to kill him, as a victory of sorts. Stretching, he rolled his neck around, hearing the quiet crackle of cartilage popping back into place before getting up. He briefly considered staying, but he could feel the faint gnaw of hunger that was steadily growing and wanted to check in with Maria to see how Coulson's op was going.

Heading out of Medical, he nodded briefly to the nurse on duty and headed to the barracks for a quick shower before quickly eating in the mess hall. The gnawing hunger sated at the moment, he headed to Simmons' lab to see if she and Bruce had any updates before planning to swing by the war room.

The lab was already bustling with various personnel and for a moment, Steve could almost see Howard amongst them, a ghost gliding through the white-coated scientists, grease-covered mechanics, and people shouting things at each other that he did not understand. The moment passed as he spotted Simmons studying charts with an intense look of concentration. Near her were Dr. Foster and Selvig, both whom looked like they were in deep conversation. The mechanics on the other side of the lab looked like they were still taking apart metallic shrapnel and burnt pieces, one of which clearly had Stark Industries on a wing panel.

Beyond them, he saw Leo Fitz, tinkering with something that looked very familiar and realized it was Sam's redesigned EXO-Falcon flightpack. He decided to bypass Simmons for the moment and carefully picked his way through the working personnel, lifting his hand up in a slight wave of greeting when Fitz turned, blinking his eyes slowly as he spotted him.

“Hello,” the scientist's speech was halted and stuttered, but Steve could see the keenness in his bright eyes; the intelligence he had heard about Fitz having, seemingly trying to compensate for his slow movements and speech.

“They found it?” he gestured towards what Fitz was working on and received a nod in return.

“Minimal...damage...not part of ex-explosion,” Fitz frowned, mostly at himself, as if he was angry for not being able to speak normally, to not be able to push past the limitations of his own body.

For a second, Steve wanted to reach a hand out, to reassure Fitz that he was doing fine, that he could take his time, but saw something in that angry look directed at himself that he instantly recognized as his own from, well, not really long ago. Technically, it had only been four, nearly five, years since he had taken the serum, and before that, twenty-something years of living in a body so scrawny and weak that the winters nearly killed him if the summers did not get him. Fitz more than likely received pity and comfort from others, to the point where he did not exactly want it – a resentful appreciation if you will – and Steve saw the small spark of that.

Instead, he nodded sharply, “No Iron Man suit pieces?”

“No,” Fitz replied and gestured to the flightpack, “was...rescue. No...wait, was-”

“Tony probably had to rescue Sam falling that high up in the air and that's probably how HYDRA got them in the end,” he finished for Fitz and saw a rueful smile light up in his face, the anger and self-loathing momentarily gone as Fitz nodded jerkily. “Residue?”

“Quinjet,” Fitz continued, “p-pre-fall. Manu...manufactured now different.” He made a noise of frustration in his throat, but Steve nodded.

“Manufactured with different alloys now, especially since most military and para-military don't exactly have the resources. Stark Industries is one of the few who do, and Boeing as well as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, all of it...can't be building this stuff without their government contracts taking big notice,” Steve rubbed his chin a little at the implications, “if the residue from the explosions used...”

Fitz nodded again, his shoulder and arm involuntarily twitching a little as he showed him a tablet. It was a bunch of computer-related windows that were open that Steve did not even recognize, vaguely wondering if it was similar to Skye's hacking, but he did recognize the overlay of a map and several points, mostly in Europe and Asia, some in Africa and South America. “Shipment traces?” he guessed and saw Fitz nod and reach over to point at a cluster which was located in south Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

“SHIELD bases, safehouses,” he shakily touched something on the tablet and lights of blue appeared on top and next to the clusters of yellow. However, there was one patch and spaces of yellow that dotted what Steve instantly recognized as the Alps mountain range.

“How?” he asked, frowning as he stared at the map. If the quinjet that had attacked Tony and Sam had come along there...well...there was definitely a HYDRA base there, Schmidt's old base even.

“L-Location, distance,” Fitz unsteadily swiped his finger across, his hand instantly clenching into a fist once in frustration before relaxing and pointing at a new window that popped up. Steve recognized it as data regarding the quinjet fleet built before SHIELD's fall, rotors, fuel status, time and location of Stark's jet leaving JFK, over to where the estimated probable attack took place related to the debris in the water. There was also an accounting for tides, wind speed, and oceanic swells.

A thought occurred to Steve as he swiped back to the map. “Do you have the old maps of HYDRA's bases back during the war?”

“No,” Fitz looked puzzled and pointed to a door beyond the lab area, “storage, or war room.”

“Mind if I look?” he gestured towards the storage area and Fitz shook his head, digging through his pockets before handing him a keychain. Steve took it, “Fitz, can you send this to the war room? If I find the map, I want overlay your data with it, maybe we can narrow down potential locations.”

“G-Got it,” the scientist grinned before Steve left and opened the door to the storage room.

The overwhelming musty smell of decay papers and old material greeted Steve as he wrinkled his nose against the smell and stepped in, careful to not knock over boxes and things placed haphazardly on each other. This must have been Howard's old storage area and it looked like it had been recently cleaned out, more than likely what Coulson and his team had initially searched for when Bucky stopped by the tower. The metal shipments and paper trail Howard had meticulously documented were a dead end, his apparent supplier of the vibranium to his shield listed as 'friend.' Whether or not whomever Howard had been naming as a friend was truly a friend was another story, but he supposed that Stark Industries had corporate secrets and Tony had been digging up his company's paper files before Bruce's subpoena and all of this. However, Steve knew that paper documentation was easy to lose back then, even with order and requisition forms they filled out – the Howling Commandos were no stranger to occasionally not receiving supplies they had ordered or had received equipment that were not even  _ on  _ the order itself. More than once, it was usually Howard wanting them to test weaponry or something on HYDRA, but sometimes it was Colonel Phillips who happened to slip them a piece of armor or helmet that one of the Commandos could use on the front lines. One time, it was chocolate bars for all of them – that had definitely been a welcomed treat.

Steve searched the boxes, flipping through the old paper and waving his hand occasionally to clear the dust. However, after at least an hour of carefully combing through the boxes, did not find what he was looking for and stepped out, locking the door behind him.

“No luck?” Fitz spoke up as he tossed the keys back to him, the young man catching them with one hand before grinning at what he had done. Steve smiled in return and caught Simmons across the room hiding a smile of her own at what had just happened. He knew that the two were sweet on each other, in what should have been weird, but was oddly refreshing to see – almost like him and Peggy back during the war.

“I'll try the war room,” he said as he headed out, “thanks for your help Fitz.”

“Any t-time Captain,” the young scientist looked a lot more pleased than frustrated when he had first arrived.

Steve arrived in the war room in short order and saw Maria leaning over a corner of the main map, surveillance footage windows popped up around her in a small cluster. “Captain,” she greeted absently as she poked one of the windows, enlarging and shrinking it as if she was playing around with it. “Nothing much here if you're checking in. Coulson's having some shut-eye right now. Skye just woke up and traded places with him. Ward's apparently doing fine according to May and Triplett.”

“Ward?” Steve noted that there were dark circles under Maria's eyes, but she shrugged.

“I got some sleep,” she reassured him, “if only a few hours. Grant Ward, former Level 7 SHIELD Agent. You haven't worked with him because he's a demolitions and weapons expert and we usually send him out on solo missions, similar to what we sent Agent Barton and Romanov out before she was assigned to STRIKE Delta for the Lumerian Star mission.”

“Former,” he stated and she snorted quietly, a quick mirthless smile gracing her lips before she frowned and poked absently at a camera that showed Strucker, Agent May, and Triplett wandering around the suite. Maria dragged a small file folder and enlarged it in the holographic hard-light projector as Steve stood next to her.

“He was a HYDRA mole on Coulson's team. Except according to him, he explicitly followed Agent John Garrett, his former S.O. Garrett was the first of the Project Deathlok testers, cybernetic replacement. It worked to a certain extent, but it needed a lot more refinement and Garrett decided to seek out some kind of formula that would make him heal the damage he had received. He was probably considered a splinter HYDRA within SHIELD, but it doesn't excuse the fact that he was still HYDRA and provided a lot of the backbone and research to Project Centipede.”

“Garrett created the Centipede soldiers?” Steve raised an eyebrow at the information.

“Probably, but he definitely had help from elsewhere. Coulson's been looking into that since last year,” Maria shrugged, “since Project Tahiti brought him back to life, Ward needed that information for Garrett and so betrayed his team.”

“And he's out on this op? Impersonating Strucker?” he blinked, surprised and saw Maria grimace.

“I don't like it either,” she said, “but he does have Strucker's build and he's second to Romanov in infiltration skills.”

“Officially on the boards?”

“Officially and unofficially,” Maria knew how he had long felt about SHIELD's internal scoring and recognition system. But she also knew that something like that was needed to ensure that their assets were given missions to their skillsets and skills alone. “Coulson thinks that Ward can be rehabilitated. I'm just pissed because I didn't see that son of a bitch's true colors when I vetted him.”

“You vetted him?”

“Kid had recommendations from his military school. His records indicated that he came from a broken family home. Nothing unusual about that, a lot of SHIELD agents and personnel have varying family problems or none at all. Apparently his older brother James used to torment him and his younger brother Stephen. According to Ward's story and confirmation by police and forensic records, Stephen died at the bottom of the family well, and Ward was not allowed to rescue him. He ran away after that, joining the military school before returning to torch the place to kill his parents and older brother. According to police reports, the attempt did not succeed and his family is looking to press charges.”

“SHIELD made that disappear,” Steve pointed out and Maria nodded.

“We did,” she watched as he scrolled through Grant Ward's file.

“He's pretty young,” Steve noted the date of birth, pegging Ward to be just little bit older than Sharon and Natasha if not about the same age. “Trained as a marksman, solo operations...infiltration and explosives...”

“Fury specifically picked him out for Coulson's team,” Maria shifted and Steve looked up at her, pursing his lips a little as he finally saw the sense of disquiet in her body language.

“What...” he watched as she moved a little closer to him and dropped her head a little, indicating that what she was about to say was completely confidential, but also wanted to be said in the very public war room so that no conceivable bug could pick up the sound of their voices.

“The reason why Coulson picked Ward for the op was two fold,” Maria started, “because if it was up to me, I'd shoot the bastard dead for being a traitor and for what he did to Agent Hand and the others at the Slingshot. He's the one who led Garrett to the Slingshot, got all of the 0-8-4s out into HYDRA's hands.”

Steve breathed quietly through his nose, suppressing the urge to react to the news. Why would Coulson allow-

“You remember the list of infiltration operatives, right?” Maria asked and he nodded. “You know who's third on the list.”

“Clint,” he had seen the list once he had Level 8 clearance, having the ability to pick his team on occasion for any mission Fury had assigned him.

“You remember the scores?”

“There's a definitive gap between Natasha and Clint, but it makes more sense considering who she is,” he said, before it hit him and he blinked, “but the gap is noticeably large when you look at Ward and Natasha compared to Clint...”

Maria only nodded once before flicking a new window for him to look at. He shrunk it so that only he could see it and saw that it was a list of known aliases for Baron von Strucker. Steve had to look through the names twice before seeing one of them that looked familiar – John Bronson. He flicked to the window with Ward's personnel file on it and saw the same name, listed as Ward's step-father.

“You have got to be...” Steve trailed off as he glanced at Maria who nodded again, confirming what he thought was going on. He shook his head and whispered, “Red Room...?”

“Coulson suspects that he was going to be the first of a new type of Black Widow project, except more in line with home grown terrorism in the United States. All the more excuse for HYDRA to make the public trade their freedom for tightened security and surveillance,” Maria said quietly and Steve continued to shake his head. What Alexander Pierce said, coupled with all of this, with HYDRA's plans and what the Red Room was designed for, what the Winter Soldier had done with the Cold War, what Natasha did before her defection...

A thought occurred to him, “Ward  _ was _ going to be? You mean...he ran away then came back to set fire to his...home...”

“It fits with the analysis of what he was going to be. A typical American boy growing up, so it stood that their training regimen was a little looser, so to speak. Coulson, Romanov, and I think that he's only partially trained, not completely brainwashed into their mentality. Unfortunately, Agent Garrett must have somehow known about his file or something related to him through Strucker and HYDRA and picked him up at the juvenile facility he was at to bring him into a different aspect of HYDRA in the end.”

“So Ward knows Strucker well enough to impersonate him, to pull off this operation while we keep the real Strucker here,” Steve mused, “but...I'm assuming Fury knew about Ward's past, so why would he assign someone like that to Coulson's team? I mean, now we know that Red Room is associated with HYDRA, but-”

“Fury only knew when he sent Natasha to investigate Ward's past,” Maria explained, “then immediately made sure that Ward's file was in the ones that May picked out for Coulson's team. May only knows about Ward's skillset, which was to neutralize Coulson if there were any...untoward effects of Project Tahiti.” She gave him a bracing smile, “Fury's got it in his head that Coulson can apparently rehabilitate Red Room agents after seeing how he became Natasha's handler while Clint was her S.O.”

“So it's a chance for Coulson to give Grant Ward a second chance?” Steve asked, a little dubious, “what aren't you telling me?”

The bracing smile disappeared and Maria swallowed heavily and let out an audible sigh, “Coulson can't ship Ward out, not without word getting out to HYDRA about him. And besides the fact that Ward does know Strucker and can impersonate him, he's useful to a certain extent.” She shrugged, “The reason why Coulson would ship Ward out right now is because of who's in Medical.”

“B-” Steve's eyes darted to her for a second, realizing how soft Maria had lowered her voice, “Bucky?”

“Natasha only told Coulson and I that she just literally got confirmation on the last piece of evidence on Grant Ward's training from Barnes while we were coming over. It seems he remembered bits and pieces of training Ward, though he may not necessarily know it was him. According to Natasha, he said something about leaving a child down a well, a burning house...”

“...What...” Steve stated flatly and Maria only shook her head.

“I'm guessing Coulson didn't want Barnes accidentally wandering into the prison block area and finding Ward there, especially since we have no idea what kind of programming he may have had regarding training people.”

“He seemed okay with Natasha,” Steve saw the slight eye-rolling look Maria shot at him and knew that his answer was not exactly concrete. It could have easily been hand-waved to say that it was because Bucky and Natasha were lovers back then.

“But, like I said, I'm pissed at Ward, so I'd like to think that it's because he doesn't want to clean up Ward's sorry ass for all that he did,” she shrugged again, “at least Ward's off of the damn base and has May and Triplett watching him like hawks in case he decides to do anything funny while on this op.”

“He doesn't know,” Steve breathed out after a few minutes of silence, referring mostly to Bucky, but also realizing that it applied to Ward too judging by her cautious nod of agreement. He flicked the files over to Maria who immediately made the windows disappear. He figured she had probably encrypting them so that no one else would be able to figure out the connection. “He...”

“No, he doesn't,” she looked at him, her eyes serious, “and it's something on a need to know basis.”

“So...why-”

“I'm not like Coulson or like Fury, your compliment days ago not withstanding,” she said, “I understand the cloak and dagger game, but I'm a front-line soldier, direct approach instead of hiding behind information and using it to blackmail others. I'll play that game if it's really important, but something like this...well... It's up to you if you want to tell Barnes about this when he wakes up. But I wanted you to know before anything else happens.”

Steve smiled bitterly, “Thanks...and I also just realized how sick Strucker was...Grant's brothers?”

“...Yeah...fucked up,” Maria turned back to the monitors in front of her. “If this op goes well, we can either question Strucker without HYDRA none the wiser, or we can find out where they've taken Stark and Wilson.”

“Wait,” Steve remembered why he had come to the war room in the first place and looked around, “wait, do you know where the Director left the boxes that he pulled out of Howard's storage room?”

“I think over there?” Maria pointed at the corner where Skye's workstation was, and Steve saw a pile of boxes with folders stacked all over the place.

“Fitz figured out where some of the explosives used on the Learjet came from and also extrapolated from what type of quinjets were used in the attack based on that,” Steve said a little loudly for Maria to hear as he made his way to Skye's workstation and started to dig through the boxes. “He's sent the file to the projector, I think-”

“Found it,” Maria called out as he stacked files to the side, carefully combing through the old, fragile paper that were well preserved, but yellowed with age and time. “Nice work Fitz...” he heard her murmur and smiled inwardly.

He continued to carefully dig through the boxes and files, as he heard Maria relay information to Skye regarding apparently the gala which was to start soon and what former Agent Ward was going to wear as Strucker. She was also briefing an extraction plan for two teams of SHIELD agents whom were going to intercept the three on their way to the airport at a moment's notice during the gala, hoping that by then Ward, May, and Triplett would have some information or otherwise.

It was in the middle of digging through the boxes that Steve finally stumbled upon the very large and carefully preserved map that he had pointed out the location of HYDRA factories he had seen in Schmidt's base to Peggy. The marks were still there and he smiled fondly at the memory of Peggy's coy remark that no one was perfect at memorizing everything. Setting it aside, he continued to dig through the box of folded maps and files, pulling out another one which had been marked later one with updated information including the location of where the  _ Valkyrie _ was going to be launched, courtesy of Zola.

Placing that folded map carefully on top of his other one, he re-stacked the boxes back into a semblance of normalcy and exited Skye's workstation, putting both maps on the edge of the projection table. “This thing has Stark's fancy gadgets?”

“More than likely yes,” Maria looked at him and down at the map as he carefully unfolded the first one and spread it out of the table. Immediately he noticed a blue light seemingly running back and forth before a holographic three-dimensional image appeared, complete with mountain ranges and the black marked spots appearing to hover over the map with little sticks and arrows pointing down where they originally were. Steve frowned as he took the map away and folded it back up before he saw Maria pinch the air above it and seemingly dragged the map to a smaller size.

He unfolded the other map and let the computer do its work, this time taking a little longer as there was far more information written on it than the other one. When it was done he stared at it for a moment, still easily mesmerized by the technology Tony had created and improved upon. A part of him wished that they had something like this back during the war, it would have made figuring out equipment and elevation as well as troop movement a lot easier. He absently took the map and folded it back up, setting both to the corner of the table as Maria took the first map and expanded it to the same size as the one just scanned.

The computer seemingly knew that it wanted to merge the two together before it beeped for them to continue and she took Fitz's file and overlaid it with everything. Steve let loose a breath he did not know he had held as he watched all of the data populate, hoping that there was something within the string of mountains that would be able to pinpoint where Sam and Tony were being held-

“Damn,” he said quietly in disappointment as he saw that none of the old HYDRA bases Schmidt had operated out of matched any of what Fitz had found. The one even in the launching point of the  _ Valkyrie _ did not match. The cluster of yellows that indicated quinjets built before SHIELD's fall did not have any matching bases.

“It's not a complete waste,” Maria was studying the map with a light in her eyes, “some of these actually match some intelligence we've been getting regarding weapons caches and HYDRA safehouses.”

“I was hoping-” he cut himself off as he shook his head, “it was worth a shot...”

“It is,” Maria touched a few windows before removing a small thumb drive, “here, take a copy and keep looking through it. Maybe a second or third look at it may reveal something.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he took the thumb drive and stuffed it into the pocket of his pants, “I'll be in Medical if anything happens.”

“Steve,” she called out as he started to head out, “it was worth a try.”

He nodded, not looking back at her as he continued to walk, hands jammed into the pockets of his leather jacket. He had hoped...had wanted something to show Bucky when he woke up, that he did not need to go hopping all over the globe and instead go straight to the source. He arrived back at Medical in short order and stopped, surprised to see Thor occupying the seat where he had fallen asleep earlier.

“Thor,” he greeted, seemingly startling the Thunder God out of his thoughts as he looked up and a smile split his lips.

“Steven,” Thor greeted in return. It had taken a while for Steve to insist to Thor to stop calling him CaptainRogers or StevenRogers when they were not on a mission. He had pointed out to Thor that he called Jane Foster, Jane while Thor had pointed out that Asgardians did not have last names like apparently mortals did. Apparently he had also called Jane because of her insistent request and because she had explained that it was custom for mortals to do so when they became close friends or lovers. That had left Steve a little sheepish until Thor had laughed said that it was in jest. He had given him the real explanation why and it was because he was still acclimating to mortal customs and wanted to be sure that he was not going to make enemies by calling people by names they did not prefer. Steve did not quite understand why, but he supposed that there was probably a story and history behind that explanation and did not want to pry.

“Our friends sleep well,” Thor inclined his head once towards Natasha and Bucky who still looked, for all intents and purposes, like they were sound asleep and nothing could wake them. Their respective monitors beeped steady pulses and both of their breathing was steady.

“I thought you'd be spending time with Dr. Foster,” Steve pulled up another chair and sat in it.

“I knew you would worry about your shield-brother and for Agent Romanov until you returned so I kept watch for you, in your stead,” Thor replied simply and Steve smiled.

“Thanks,” he sighed, “I mean...”

“It is of no consequence,” Thor waved away whatever he was about to say, “I have also business to ask of you and thought it prudent to wait for your return.”

“Really?”

“I wish to question Baron von Strucker,” Thor looked at him and Steve saw a hint of feral anger in them, “if you wish to accompany me, I would not mind the company.”

Steve pursed his lips as he sat forward, hunched over with his hands clasped to his chin, “Question him.”

“It is not for what you think it may be,” the anger disappeared from Thor's eyes as he frowned and rubbed his beard, “he...unsettles me.”

“Unsettles?”

“As you know, I am not magick-inclined like my brother,” Thor shrugged and gestured to Mjolnir hanging by his side, “and I do not know what magicks or charms were placed upon my weapon of choice. But I am not oblivious to the use of it and that Mjolnir is imbued with a sort of magicks that enable me to fight with it, to summon lightning and be the Thunder God.”

“...How?”

Thor shrugged again, “Like I said, I do not exactly understand how it works. It does not whisper nor communicate in any fashion that my brother may deem to explain when he thinks I am not listening. It is...instinctual, I believe is the best word for it. Perhaps...similar to how you throw your shield?”

“Probably,” Steve scratched a minor itch on his jaw, “instinct is the best word I guess...and probably a lot of training.”

“Yes, it is similar,” Thor looked a little lost before clearing his throat, “but it is also how I am occasionally able to...seek out...to feel when magicks are used. Perhaps it is a lifetime of growing up next to Loki that I can occasionally sense his magicks, sense the  _ feel _ of them-”

“Like how you felt the portals into the shadows of Yggdrasil back then?” Steve remembered Thor being able to somehow pinpoint and use Mjolnir to great effect whenever Loki used his own magics to counter Thanos'.

“Similar,” Thor agreed, “and also when the Allmother uses her magicks and perhaps the Allfather when he uses Gungnir.”

“Queen Frigga uses magic? Err...magick,” Steve corrected his pronunciation and saw a small smile on Thor's face at his self-correction.

“Yes,” Thor nodded, “it is not widely known, or if it is, the Courtiers ignore it as they are wont to do regarding magicks and our brethren the Vanir. But Queen Frigga is known to be a Healer, though I remember her also having control over illusion magick. She was Loki's first teacher before he found his coterie...and Lady Death.”

“So it could be familial then, that's probably what you're feeling from your parents, right?” Steve said and Thor nodded again.

“But I have not been able to feel the magicks of others...even of Loki's coterie. To me, magicks just feels a sense of unease, of...something not quite right...not there...”

“You're getting that feeling from Strucker?” Steve wrinkled his brow at Thor who nodded sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head.

“I am,” he looked a little embarrassed by the confession, “and I do not know why. He is of your world and certainly not magick-inclined. At least I do not know of mortals who have harnessed the powers my brother and others have harnessed.”

“There are always others,” Steve remembered Jasper Sitwell mentioning Dr. Stephen Strange and had once come across the man's files, but only vaguely mentioning some unusual powers of sorts. Maybe it was magic, maybe it was not, he never really got another look at the file since SHIELD had fallen. But he did know that HYDRA considered Strange a big enough of a threat to try to kill him with the Insight Helicarriers.

“This Strucker...he has accomplished, it is not intended for what I mean by it, all of this by mortal means,” Thor gestured to Natasha and Bucky, “but I do not understand why I feel the unease of potential magicks around him.”

“Okay,” Steve sat back, crossing his arms, “so what do you intend to do? Ask him? Threatening him just got him laughing like a lunatic and then...well...this...”

“If he created the horror that your shield-brother went through, I wish to find out the means in which he accomplished such a thing,” Thor pursed his lips, looking elsewhere.

“Huh?”

“Steven,” Thor looked back at him, “do you know why your shield reflects all manner of attack, even from Mjolnir? It is a weapon forged in the heart of a star and yet you were able to successfully repel it when we first met.”

“Howard Stark did say that it was vibration proof,” Steve glanced down at where his shield by the wall near Thor, “called it vibranium.”

“There is no element mortals have that could conceivably reflect any of Asgard's technology,” Thor pointed out and Steve nodded, “even Director Coulson's favored weapon was created from the remains of the Destroyer, a magick construct created by my father, controlled through Gungnir.”

“I'm...not following you...”

“I was not able to defeat the Destroyer by hitting it with Mjolnir,” Thor explained, “I was able to defeat it because I reflected it's attack back at it, destroying it from within in. I was able to pinpoint the source of unease within the Destroyer because it was my father's creation and thus able to figure out how to defeat it.” He pointed to Bucky, or more to Bucky's metal arm, “Your friend has that same unease I feel now...”

It took a few seconds for Steve to process what Thor was saying and his eyes widened in shock at the implications, “Wait a minute...” He stared at Bucky's arm and noticed that it was segmented,  _ very _ segmented like the footage of the Destroyer that Steve had read in the Avengers Initiative packets. “But...the Destroyer only came about four years ago...” He trailed off as he blinked rapidly, his mind trying to process what Thor was saying, “And you're feeling this unease-”

“Which begs the question as to why,” Thor shook his head, “why do I feel something that only those related to me is something I can feel. Why do I feel it on your friend's arm, on parts of your shield, and on Strucker.”

“The vibranium?” Steve had almost forgotten that Tony had said that Bucky's arm was part vibraium and that some of the shipments had been traced to this very base. “But-”

“It is my theory that the vibranium of your shield, and of your friend's arm, is not of this world, Steven Rogers,” Thor looked solemn, “and I intend to find out why Strucker has it. Why it had existed for so long.”

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Borrowing _CA:TWS_ and watching it over the weekend made me cackle like a loon. Still am cackling like one.

 


	22. Chapter 22

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 22_

 

Steve supposed it was inevitable that Coulson would have a spare version of his uniform on the base. He would have liked to have thought that it was because this was the unofficial SHIELD headquarters, the secret base of operations for a majority of clandestine missions against HYDRA and any other enterprising groups that cropped up in wake of AIM's demise and the now-defunct, or at least minimal presence, of the Ten Rings. Still, it actually felt comfortable slipping in the kevlar-hardplate reinforced body armor. If there was one thing he was really grateful for waking up in the future was the vast improvements in personnel protection, reducing, but not quite eliminating, the number of casualties on the battlefield. Unfortunately, the uptick of IEDs, anti-personnel weaponry, and general advance weaponry more than made up for that. He had hoped that he had woken up after the war-to-end-all-wars had been fought to a more peaceful future, but it was not to be.

His wounds sustained only about two days ago at the courthouse had completely healed, leaving minimal scarring. Securing his shield to the back of his straps, he twisted a little, feeling the familiar tugs of fabric and movement. The design was mostly the same except for the slight addition of dark red along the panels near his stomach, giving him the more familiar red-white-blue coloring; though everything was of a darker shade so that he could at least stealth without being a giant beacon of color. He twisted a couple more times before stepping out of the locker room area of the armory, nodding to Thor who had been waiting for him.

He would have liked to have accompanied Thor to question Strucker right after his offer. But after hearing what his friend said about the uneasiness, the unsettled feeling he got from Strucker and the fact that Thor suspected Strucker to not be quite...human for the lack of a better word, Steve wanted to be in uniform – in case Strucker was a Gifted or otherwise had hostile intentions. He had already proven that there were trigger words programmed into Bucky and Natasha and Steve did not want to be caught off guard by anything the man could throw at them, even tied to his chair. The other reason was because he wanted to ask Strucker why – because Bucky could not. Why would he do something like this to his friend? Why would he twist and turn someone's mind like that, wipe away memories, program something so searing into the mind that it inflicted horrific pain until the programming was completed.

Thor absently twisted Mjolnir in his hand as the two of them headed towards the room Strucker was held in, a few levels down from Medical in the same general area of the base. They stopped in front of the two agents who were guarding the door and Steve gestured towards it, “Can we?”

“Director Coulson and Agent Hill did not leave any instruction for the Baron to be questioned at this time,” one of the Agents frowned, “I'll have to ask Agent Hill.”

Steve quickly debated the merit of ignoring and not letting Hill know that they were down here to question Strucker, but decided against it and nodded. “Please do.”

The agent looked a little more relaxed and tapped her ear, “Ma'am, Agent Ngani here. Captain Rogers and Thor are asking to see the prisoner- Yes...yes ma'am...” She looked at him, “Captain, Agent Hill wants you to patch into frequency twenty-one.”

Steve tapped his own ear and adjusted the tiny dial in the ear before he heard the click of a line being secured and Coulson's absent voice, “-no the merits of Starbucks and their burnt coffee isn't a food group.”

“Sir,” he waited a second before a soft click told him that Hill had adjust her headset to their frequency.

“Director,” Hill started without preamble.

“Maria? Cap?”

“Thor and I would like to question Strucker,” he reiterated his request.

“Thor's got a hunch doesn't he?” Coulson asked and Steve frowned, wondering how did he know until Coulson continued mildly, “he has a slight twitching tell whenever something magick or something advance tech, Asgard tech may be involved. I kind of noticed it when we were outside the room.”

“Yes sir,” Steve was well aware that the other agents were still standing there, not quite listening to his one-sided conversation, but also that it was information on a need to know basis.

“All right,” Coulson said, “I'll authorize it. I want your wrist mic on full volume though and stay on this line. The gala's already starting and the team's in place.”

“I told him about Grant Ward,” Maria interjected and silence reigned on the comm for a few seconds.

“Hill-”

“He needed to know,” she replied simply and without any defensiveness to her tone.

Coulson was silent for another few seconds before he came back, “And the other matter?”

“Nothing's come up, which means someone's definitely taken a lot of time to hide the files,” Maria replied.

“Then Cap, I'm going to need you to see if you can get any information on a one Vasily Karpov from Baron von Strucker,” Coulson said quietly, “he's related to the Red Room, but we don't know in what capacity. He has ties to Baron von Strucker, that much is for certain and it is a Russian name; so there may be more ties to Sergeant Barnes and Agent Romanov.”

“Roger,” he said before looking up at the two agents, “we've been given authorization, Agent Ngani.”

“Yes sir,” the agent replied and Steve stepped in after Thor, adjusting the microphone hidden snugly around the wrist area of his uniform. The door closed behind them with a click and Steve stepped to the side, noting that the comm line he had open to Maria and Coulson sounded oddly quiet, a sign that they had both muted their outgoing lines so that he did not have to listen to any ambient noise their own mics may pick up.

Strucker was still seated where he had been left, but Steve picked up on the fact that his clothes had been adjusted, a sign that they had allowed him to at least use the facilities or had maybe even given him something to eat. He was no stranger to prisoners of war or anyone they had captured from HYDRA back in the war, but it at least gave him a measure of relief that SHIELD had treated their prisoners in a somewhat humane way. He had seen far too many intelligence footage and news footage for that matter to know that in this day and age, many hostile organizations did not exactly follow the Geneva Protocols.

A bandage and splint was wrapped around Strucker's right wrist, and it looked like the cuff was a little looser to accommodate it. Steve realized that Bucky had probably broken it when he confronted Strucker – and that Strucker had not even shown any sign of pain when he had been initially questioned. The man had looked up when they had entered, his eyes tracking them and looked back and forth as Steve stayed closer to the door to let Thor ask what he wanted to ask. Mjolnir had been holstered, but it hung loosely and visibly next to Thor's side and Steve noted that Strucker flicked a look at it before staring back at Thor.

“I have heard of Mjolnir and of the Thunder God, but I did not believe until now,” Strucker started almost conversationally and quietly before turning his head a little to look at him, “and you, Captain. Your exploits against Herr Schmidt's original HYDRA and Mr. Pierce's recent revival is a work of wonder.”

“I'm sure only you would think of the hundreds and thousands of lives lost in the process would be wonderful,” Steve said flatly, a frown on his face.

“Oh, but that was not my doing, Captain. That was yours,” Strucker shrugged a little, his chains jangling in the jarring silence of the room. “Even now, hiding like rats in the sewers, all because you wished to release the information that led to your organization's downfall.” He sighed, “We could have co-existed together, Captain. You did not have to bathe in the blood of hundreds and thousands, not only in Washington D.C., but across the world. So many covers burned, so many lives lost...from the shadows, we come out into the open.”

“I have heard better lies and half-truths told than the ones you speak of,” Thor interrupted with half of a sarcastic laugh and Strucker immediately stared at him, his curling smile growing just a little wider.

“You speak of Loki, the fabled Silvertongue, do you not?” Strucker asked and Steve frowned a little, wondering for a second why did Strucker's manner of speech and syntax suddenly change into something so formal and without contractions like Thor's. In fact, it sounded eerily imperious, a little like Thor's...no....definitely more like Odin's or Loki's manner of speaking than Thor's more easygoing one.

“You are very well versed in the tales told on this realm,” Thor crossed his arms, seemingly relaxed, but Steve did not miss the fact that Thor also noted the change in syntax and manner of speech.

“Hitler was fond of such tales of power as was Herr Schmidt,” Strucker shrugged nonchalantly, “twas a pity that Doktor Zola did not give us the knowledge we needed to harness the Tesseract before the Silvertongue came through three years ago.”

“I'm sure his memory banks were wiped with a giant magnet,” Steve said, noting the minute start from both Thor and Strucker at his words. He kept his face passive instead of reacting to the digging sarcasm he had thrown out there, that he could be as sarcastic as the rest of them.

“Ah, I had forgotten you had a sense of humor, Captain,” Strucker's lips curled into a half-smile as he looked back and forth at the two of them, “tell me, does the son of Coul expect me to talk? To spill my secrets of your friends? Surely now the media has been a fever pitch wondering where the famed Tony Stark is?”

“We've got that covered,” Steve answered simply. To be honest, he actually had not really looked at the latest media reports, but hoped that if there was anything out there, Maria had been able to handle it. Usually it was Tony's job, but Maria's profile had risen in the media since her testimony in Congress and she was considered probably a more by-the-book public relations person than Tony's usual ramblings and innuendos.

Strucker smiled tilted his head in acknowledgment of his shutting down that question before staring back and forth at them, “Well then, do what do I owe this pleasure of your visit? I offer again, do you wish to know the locale of your friends? I can give that to you, but you will not believe me and I know the Director would want to confirm it before sending the Avengers on such a heroic rescue mission.” His smile grew a bit wider, “And why should you react to such information or misinformation – for all you know it is because we want our weapon back.”

“You're not getting Bucky,” Steve knew it was an attempt to get a rise out of him, and he knew he let Strucker's words affect him, but he would be damned if he did not say it.

“Such devotion,” Strucker shook his head, “such bravery and such familial love. What one brother would do for another, even if they are not bound by blood. Hmm?” He looked at Thor a glint in his eyes, “The magicks you, Thunder God, so obviously do not have and yet you still claim to love Loki like your own. How very touching...”

Steve frowned a little at the words, but before he could say anything Thor leaned forward a little, settling his hands on the table, a smile unlike one that could easily be on Loki's face on his own. He was a little unsettled at how alike Thor was to Loki even though they were not related. It certainly proved that the two grew up around each other, maybe occasionally mimicking the other. He was mostly sure that Thor did not realize how much he looked like Loki whereas if it was Loki in Thor's place, he would be all the more aware of it.

“Your comments could have been constrained to listening devices placed upon the Helicarrier during the time about how I mentioned Loki was adopted. Or perhaps when my brother has visited twice in the past three years since New York,” Thor started quietly, almost regally like Odin on the throne, “but none would have known what you have just revealed.”

Strucker's face closed up for a moment and Steve was confused until Thor started again, “Tell me, Baron von Strucker, of what realm you hail from. Certainly not Midgard. Vanaheim? Alfheim? A shapeshifter amongst them? Perhaps an illusionist or Jotun magister, hidden from the persecution a millenia ago?”

Strucker pressed his lips together as he smiled blandly, sitting back in the chair as much as his restraints allowed him to, “Perhaps you are not as dimwitted as I had observed...” He tilted his head a little as Steve stared carefully at Strucker, the words exchanged not lost on him. His muscles were tensed, ready to draw his shield if Strucker did anything remotely close to attacking or using some kind of magic spell on them. He had every confidence that Thor would also react; having proven to be hardier than him for the most part, but all Steve had was his shield to protect himself. The fact that Strucker had all but said that he was not human, or at least not from Earth, made Steve confused and worried. More worried than confused, but for what it meant to Bucky, to the Winter Soldier, to HYDRA...

Schmidt wielding the Tesseract had long proven that the object was definitely not from Earth and contained some element that Steve could not even begin to comprehend, but the fact that there were _more_ aliens, beings from other planets living on Earth. Especially someone like Strucker running HYDRA? Well...

“No,” Strucker made to fold his hands and again, only succeeded in moving his elbows, glancing down at the restraints that held him. He was clearly used to an audience of sorts, of gloating and definitely hearing himself speak. “I am not from this realm. At least not as you know me.” He looked up at them and Steve tensed further as he saw something seemingly shimmering and dissolving around Strucker; his features slowly changed, melted, revealing a far more aristocratic and angular face. What had been brown hair streaked with white was now a dark auburn-red. Only the man's eyes stayed the same, a sharp blue. He still looked human, but definitely not a human from Earth – at least according to what he said.

“You were not the first to be exiled to Midgard, Thor Odinson,” Strucker's voice had been soft, smooth with the curling tones of a Germanic accent in his English. His voice now was still soft, but there was a rasp in it with an accent similar to Thor's. Instead, it sounded refined, almost like listening to Odin or even Loki. The hint of disdain, of superiority.

“Shapeshifter,” Thor stated and the man who had been Baron von Strucker, only gave a brief smile. It was an eerily similar smile to the one Strucker wore, but it was tinged with a hint of madness in it.

“Of a sort,” the man replied, “exile means losing a lot of the gifts you had scraped to gathered. That power could be regained while in exile, but it takes a very, very long time. You were given the grace of Mjolnir, after what, three days? A drop of time in the vast pool of the years of exile.”

“Then you are Asgardian-”

“I am of a realm far beyond the Allfather's gaze,” the man lifted a finger, his wrists relaxed on the sides of the chair, correcting Thor, “but where I am from is not your concern.”

“But you have spent time on Asgard to speak with such frankness of exile,” Thor countered and the man smiled, his lips twisted with amused bitterness.

“Such a child to think your experience with mortality could compare to the _eons_ spent on this Nornforsaken rock,” he scoffed before leaning forward, teeth bared, “you do not know exile until you have been stripped of everything that made you, left to slowly gather the pieces, one little bit at a time, surviving on scraps of nothing, biding your time, until it is the right moment to strike.”

The man who had worn Baron von Strucker's face suddenly stared at Steve, “It is of no coincidence that Dr. Erskine created the so-called super soldier serum nor have it stolen by his compatriot Johann Schmidt. How do you think Schmidt found the Tesseract in the first place? How do you think Dr. Zola was able to create the technology to transfer such power into lowly mortal weapons? Your technology was _laughable_ back then, projectiles, horses, and pollution of foul smelling gasses in what you deemed vehicles.”

He looked at the two of them, a half curled smile on his lips, “Howard Stark only was able to create the shield you wear because _we_ allowed him to.”

“We? As in HYDRA?” Steve jumped in, eyes narrowed. He did not like what he was hearing. A part of him wanted to think that it was just lies that was coming from the man's mouth, but another part of him could sense the truth, sense the deep seeded madness and hysterical desperation that only someone who had _been there_ would know.

The red-haired man's smile grew fractionally wider, “If you wish to believe that. For us, it is nothing more than a mere front, a long line of puppets that we have hidden behind in order to facilitate what we wish.”

“The return of your weapon?”

“The return of what is rightfully ours,” he shrugged at Thor's question, “but if you wish to think that, then yes, the return of our weapon. He wears Asgardian technology upon him, what you call vibranium, rare, and magick reflecting. We thought it would be amusing to even the playing field by giving some to Howard Stark. And here it is...the famous Captain America's shield.”

It was with some effort for Steve to _not_ react to that casual statement. He wanted to sternly tell Strucker that his amusement resulted in the thousands of lives lost, of so much sorrow, death, genocide, and imprisonment for those who had fought in World War II. All because he _wanted_ to 'even the playing field'. A well of disgusted filled Steve as he settled for glaring at the man who used to be Strucker.

“Ask him who is this 'we',” Coulson's voice suddenly burst into Steve's ear and he nearly jumped in surprise at it. He only restrained himself thus and met Strucker's amused smile to his glare.

“There's more of you?” it was not exactly what Coulson wanted, but Steve was not exactly feeling too charitable after what the auburn red-haired man was saying.

“Come now, Captain,” the man sneered, “surely you have done your research by now? Known of all of our...Red Room experiments? You would have known the names involved-”

“Seems like you weren't in the loop. Those files are sealed or non-existent. Maybe you can't be playing Baron von Strucker as well as you thought you could have-”

“Strucker was merely the skin I wore,” the red-haired man suddenly lunged forward, his restraints pulling against his motion as he glared at Steve, “you may tell my _master_ when you see him that if he expects me to keep up with this charade, he will have to give me more of my power back. Give me _all_ of it.”

“And who is your master, mage?” Thor's hand had lingered near Mjolnir and he absently gripped it now, twisting it in his fingers.

The red-haired man suddenly sat back, fury spent before giving them a chilling smile, his eyes alight with a manic glow. “You should know him, Crown Prince Thor Odinson. You should know him very well because he knows of you and of your father and forefather. Vasily Karpov is the name he has taken for the past century and half on this realm. But he was born Baldr the third son of Bor.”

Steve only had a split second to realize that the manic glow in the red-haired man's eyes was not only manic and a glow, but was actually glowing and growing brighter. He whipped his shield out just as the glow intensified and a burst of explosive magic burst forth, ripping everything to shreds. Steve was thrown hard into the wall, his vision whiting out, static washing through his ears as something clipped him across his head, knocking him out.

* * *

Maria was already moving as soon as the radio line connected to Steve dissolved into static at the same time the base shook, throwing everyone and everything around. People screamed and yelled, but she gripped the edges of the war room table, bolted to the concrete ground, and rode out the tremors-

The alarms started to blare and for a second she thought it was in reaction to whatever was making the base shake, but the projection popped up multiple warning signs of a breach above ground and she saw swarms of black-clad personnel gathering above. “Shit,” she muttered before keying the general radio, “security breach top side! All personnel report to action stations! Repeat, this is not a drill!” She immediately switched to Coulson's frequency, “Coulson-”

“I heard, I'm on my way- wait, what Skye?” there was a quick pause before Coulson' came back, “shit, Maria, can you- Ward, May, and Triplett are on the move, towards the airport.”

“I got it, get to them Phil,” Maria knew that Coulson needed to send the response teams to go after the three to enact their plan. She quickly glanced at the camera feed and to her dismay, saw that one of the teams was half-crushed by falling debris and collapsed hallway. Whatever had caused that tremor had shaken the base to its foundations that it was almost impossible to figure out how secure the base really was or how sturdy it was. Plus there were multiple breaches by what looked like HYDRA personnel and Centipede soldiers-

“Bravo, Charlie, get to the plane!” she broadcast over the general frequency, “Medical, we need personnel to Alpha's location in the hanger bay.”

“Maria?” Phil's voice was a little harried, but she heard the squeal of tires over the comm. a sign that he was going after Ward, May, and Triplett in the van.

“Standby,” she said tersely before bringing up multiple windows, looking at the damage and structure integrity. “Display base integrity and escape routes,” she could see that HYDRA was picking their way through, clearly already anticipating something happening with that tremor. The security video feed that had been showing Strucker, or at least the man who had been wearing Strucker's form, and several security cameras along the prison hallway were all static. She tapped her radio again, “I need a security team down to the prison level. Shoot on sight, Strucker may be escaping.”

“Team Delta on our way,” a gruff voice replied.

“Team Victor on route to Alpha's location. Ma'am, there's a lot of debris here-”

“Status of hanger bays?” she pulled up the video feed and patched a general open comm. line down there, “Status report, hanger bay?”

There was no response and Maria saw various personnel running about out of the corner of her eyes. Another tremor ran through the area and she gripped the edges of the table as several chunks of brick and debris fell down, startling some of the people who were still getting their bearings. She thought she could hear the distant sounds of gunfire, both in her earpiece and above and across-

“Contact! Enemy contact! Shit! Centipe-”

“Holy fu-”

Maria stared at the war room table projection as multiple windows suddenly popped up, screams filling her earpiece followed by the sound of many bullets, explosions, static-

“Ma'am! Multiple breaches-”

“Shit,” she hissed quietly as she saw an overlay of red-clad personnel slowly gaining ground on the multiple entrances of the base. Coulson had said that the last time HYDRA had attacked, they knew where exactly to make their point of attack, but had been repelled. Now, it looked like they knew the exact locations of almost _all_ of the entrances that were above ground, except for the hanger bay in the middle of the park- Either someone had tipped them off, or it had something to do with whatever happened downstairs with Strucker right before the security cameras cut out into static. Strucker, or at least the man former known as Strucker, had already proven he was not from Earth, had knowledge of Asgard, and was more than likely armed with advance technology, magic, something that they were not able to catch.

It was like Loki on the Helicarrier all over again. Except this time, Maria had a feeling that it was not more so a distraction or crashing the Helicarrier, but rather to ruthlessly eliminate whatever was left of SHIELD.

“Aerial view, scan for cloaked quinjets with known data input from the Stark and Wilson kidnapping,” she ordered and saw the projection comply before it came up negative. She pursed her lips for a second before coming to a decision. Tapping her ear she patched into the secure channel she and Coulson had been sharing with Steve. “Coulson, I need to-”

“Evacuate the base,” Coulson finished for her, his voice tight; with restraint from what was happening or from driving she did not know, “...do it.”

“I'm sorry,” she apologized before switching frequencies, “all personnel, this is Agent Maria Hill. Evacuation protocols are in effect. You have fifteen minutes to get to the hanger bay and evacuate.” She tapped a few keys on the map, “Keep scanning for cloaked quinjets. I don't want to be caught off guard, initiate Queen's Breach Protocol.” MI6 and probably the whole of the British Government were going to hate them after this, but there were far worst things that could happen than collapsing the remains of a once pristine park in the middle of London.

She met the gazes of those working in the war room and nodded once before they all hurried, most of them typing rapid commands at their stations while more than one grabbed weaponry hidden in desks or explosives and headed to the stairwells, more than likely blowing up the main computer servers or backing up information before evacuating to the hanger bay.

Tapping her earpiece again she spoke into it, “Simmons, Fitz, what's your status?”

“We're okay over here. Dr. Selvig took a piece of debris to his shoulder, but he's fine. We're on our way to the Bus after Fitz finishes destroying the data here-”

“Make sure Dr. Foster and her personnel are secure. Do you need help getting patients out of Medical-”

“Ma'am, Medical's been cut off by large debris. The stairwell's also blocked off...” Simmons sounded worried and Maria cursed silently.

“Delta here-”

“This is Agent Erin Moskowski in the hanger bay, i-is there anyone there?” a frightened young voice burst forth on the general frequency and Maria quickly patched in.

“Delta stand by,” she said before addressing the young frightened voice, “Agent Moskowski, this is Hill, situation report?”

“T-The hanger bay is mostly undamaged...s-someone jammed our comms earlier-”

“I need you to code in, Agent,” Maria quickly brought up Moskowski's file, sensing something amiss before quickly switching frequencies, “all personnel, do not enter the hanger bay until I give the all clear.”

“Y-Yes ma'am. Code, Everest,” the agent sounded frightened, but spoke the correct word for someone under duress. Sparrow would have been the response if she had not been under duress. Maria cursed silently again, biting her lip. That meant the hanger bay was compromised.

“Ma'am,” she saw Alpha leader's frequency pop up and switched over, “eyes on HYDRA agents, no Centipede soldiers yet. Looks like they were sent to guard the hanger bay. We were caught in between the debris and are hiding out behind things here in the bay. I'm seeing someone being held hostage-”

“Victor is en-route,” she merged both Victor and Alpha's frequencies before taking a deep breath and letting it out quietly. There was nothing more for her to do here and while she knew that both Alpha and Victor teams were probably capable, she needed to personally ensure that whatever remained of SHIELD would be able to get out. “Hold position until I get there.”

“Yes ma'am,” Alpha's leader replied and Victor's clicked his acknowledgment over the comm.

She switched back to the hanger bay frequency and discreetly patched Couslon's private frequency in, “Agent Moskowski, Team Victor is en-route after Everest. Can you confirm that Charlie and Bravo are out to where Agent Coulson is?”

“Y-Yes ma'am...” she could hear the fear the young agent's voice and knew immediately that Bravo and Charlie teams were more than likely dead, having not even made it out of the hanger bay. Alpha was the lucky one to have survived the ambush. Coulson's double click over the comm told her that he understood the situation and would adjust accordingly.

“Hang tight, we're on our way,” she closed the frequency and breathed out quietly for a second before heading over to where Skye's workspace was and pulled out her flak vest, adjusting the belts and buckles so that the vest was at least secure on her. It did not quite fit since she and Skye were of similar body-type, but it fit enough that she did not have to spend time in the armory finding one that would fit her.

“Agent Richards,” she turned to the technician that had been dutifully helping Coulson, “you know what to do with that, right?” She gestured to the war room table for him to wipe and physically destroy and the young agent nodded.

“Yes ma'am,” he said before giving her a brave smile, “good luck ma'am.”

Maria only smiled thinly as she drew out her gun and settled herself with a quick roll of her neck to work out a crick. It had been a while since she had led a front-line team, a long time since her STRIKE Alpha days, but for everyone's sake, she would need to reach back to those days and get everyone to safety. She flicked the safety off and headed out of the war room towards the hanger bay.

* * *

There would be no backup, that much was for certain as Coulson kept his hands steady on the wheel, eyes on the darkening road ahead of them. He had no way of relaying this to May or Triplett, after Skye had reported seeing the three leave with a group of heavily armed men from the gala. That was almost exactly the same time something happened on Captain Rogers' end with his questioning of Strucker and at the same time Maria reported multiple breaches in security as HYDRA launched another attack on the base.

All of those did not mark a coincidence in his mind; all of it marked a very well thought-out plan.

The possibility that someone was a mole inside the base was not lost on Coulson, but he suspected it had a lot to do with Baron von Strucker than a potential mole. He had been correct in his hunches that there was something off about Strucker and had been proven correct by Thor and Rogers' questioning. Strucker was not Strucker even though he was sure the real Baron von Strucker existed. They had captured someone who _looked_ like Strucker, but had also proven that he was working with the real Strucker and was involved in HYDRA. That at least confirmed something about Baron von Strucker – what it confirmed with whomever Sergeant Barnes had brought it was still up in the air, but from the ramblings of the raspy-voiced man, it sounded like something a lot bigger than just simply wanting the Winter Soldier back.

And that worried Coulson.

Earth was not ready, not at this time if someone decided to invade their planet from the stars above. Strucker, HYDRA, or whomever was behind the current crisis had easily proven that. Stark and Wilson were missing, Captain Rogers was distracted by Sergeant Barnes' situation that also involved Natasha. Dr. Banner was under media scrutiny due to his hearing in New York and needed to tread carefully. Thor apparently was facing pressure back on Asgard regarding his association with the people of Earth, that the Court of Asgard readily frowned upon because they thought they were so insignificant. And Clint... Coulson pressed his lips together in a thin line. Clint had been the first agent he had mentored, had been his S.O. when he had personally brought Barton in after the marksman had appeared on SHIELD's radar for his life of petty crime. Clint was...unavailable...to say the least. He was not missing, Coulson knew exactly where Clint was, but, unavailable was probably the best term for Clint's _very_ delicate situation.

The Avengers were scattered and it was because HYDRA or whomever was the shadow behind using HYDRA as a front played them well.

“We're not getting back up aren't we, AC?” Skye looked at him, sitting in the front passenger seat and Coulson tightened his grip a little on the steering wheel.

“No,” he replied honestly, “we'll have to do this one by ourselves.”

Skye stared out at the darkening skies, the last rays of light casting a beautiful myriad of colors across the dimming sky. “I...uh...I've been practicing at the range...”

Coulson smiled slightly and glanced at her, “You're not coming with me-”

“Phil-”

“You're going to activate the tracker I have on me after I sneak onto the plane and then contact Dr. Banner or any of the Avengers if you hear from them. They're more than likely going to disable the ones on May and Triplett if Ward's already not told them about it so you need to track mine, okay?” he glanced at her before looking back to the road.

“Figures Ward would be the one to take them hostage,” Skye thinned her lips and glared at nothing in particular, “asshole.”

Coulson shrugged. He did not voice that Ward could be in the same situation as May and Triplett, knowing that the young woman was still feeling the sting of betrayal from Ward as both her S.O. and having a little more than friendly feelings for him. He was more inclined to believe what Skye said over his own thoughts, but had learned from experience to always keep options open. Thinking down one path was the quickest way to make bad assumptions, thus spelling out the word assume – making an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me.' It was Fury's second lesson to him and John Garrett.

He slowed down as they approached the airport, spotting the car with Ward, Triplett, and May in it ahead and shut his headlamps off, pulling off to the side as they bounced around from the sudden off-roading. He slowed the van down and stopped behind a large green mound, one of the many burial mounds back from ancient times in England. From a distance, they looked small, but they were rather large and Coulson got out and crawled to the top of the mound. He heard Skye follow behind him, mimicking his movements as the two of them peered over the mound and Coulson pulled out a pair of small binoculars.

He watched as the car with the three in it pulled to a stop in front of a Learjet, more armed guards standing around outside it with the stairs already extended, waiting for people to arrive. There was a man with a balaclava that looked oddly like a skull wandering around, approaching the car as it stopped with a quiet squeak of brakes. He was wearing two bandoleers of grenades and weaponry that made him look like a skull and crossbones and for some odd reason the manner in which he walked reminded Coulson of someone.

He saw Ward, Triplett, and May get out and moved to give his binoculars as he got ready to run towards the Learjet and sneak on board when either May or Triplett's mic picked up the skull-mask balaclava's man's voice. All three had been silent throughout the ride.

“It's always good to see that the Calvary survived the purge,” Coulson froze at the drawling tone.

“Rumlow,” May's voice was tight, “too bad you didn't die in the Triskelion, or when you got your ass kicked by the Winter Soldier and Black Widow.”

“You're not Strucker,” Coulson peered through the binoculars again to see that it was indeed Agent Brock Rumlow and he had literally taken his codename Crossbones to affect with the skull-like balaclava.

“No I am not,” Coulson watched as Ward suddenly ran a hand down his face, removing the chameleon-skin mask from his face and grinned a little as his own face was revealed, “Agent Rumlow.”

“Ah....Agent Ward,” Rumlow greeted Ward like an old friend, slapping him on the back, but Coulson could see that even Ward was tense, wondering if Rumlow was going to kill him on the spot. “Good to see you again.”

“Coulson's got me on some silly assignment to impersonate Strucker, can you believe that?” Ward said with a congenial smile on his face, “Thought that he could fool HYDRA into making sure they can question Strucker without interference.”

Rumlow nodded, “I received orders to come here from home base, so it does have merit. You could have revealed yourself earlier, you know, to Elena instead of sending her to the base where she was captured.”

“Why bother?” Ward shrugged, “she wasn't effective enough to spot the difference so I got rid of her.”

Rumlow nodded, seemingly accepting Ward's explanation, “And Coulson?”

“Doesn't suspect a thing,” Ward suddenly turned and reached out to May and Triplett. There was a muffled sound before Coulson winced at the termination of small microphones each was wearing. He forced himself to stay still and not run up now, knowing that there was now a greater chance that Ward would either tell Rumlow that he may sneak aboard or tell him something to make him kill May or Triplett right then and there. He and Skye could not take on so many black ops agents, some of whom he suspected were Centipede. Instead, he watched through his binoculars again.

Ward and Rumlow were still talking, both seemingly relaxing a little as they exchanged information. From where he was, he could not make out what was being said, but saw Rumlow gesture to the plane and Ward nodding before gesturing to May and Triplett, both whom had stony looks on their faces. Their postures were tense, knowing that they were caught out, but neither of them made any moves, knowing that there was a good chance of being shot. Both were trained to take the element of surprise, to wait for the right moment-

He saw Ward suddenly accept a zip tie from Rumlow before walking over to May whose eyes were blazing with barely masked fury. He said something that made her say something back, more than likely a Chinese swear that Coulson would have given anything to be able to hear. He bit his lip, ruthlessly quelling the urge to jump and do _something_ , charge in, to rescue May and Triplett as May was turned, her hands wrenched behind her back to be bound-

And just as suddenly saw the flicker of a _signal_ in Ward's fingers, brushed gently across the bottom of his left ear. The Red Room signal for _standby_. Ward was standing behind May and had his back towards him because that signal could only be given when one's back was turned – there was no way Ward knew he was out here...

Ward suddenly stepped away from May and Coulson felt his jaw drop. “Holy...shit...” he breathed out at the sudden burst of small minute movements from May's bound hands, traveling up her arms and back down. To anyone else it looked like she was fighting her bonds, but to Coulson's trained eye and from what Natasha had showed him, May was giving him _numbers_.

“AC?” Skye did not have a pair of binoculars as Coulson sat back on the mound, watching Triplett being tied up with half of his mind, the other half _boggled_ that they had numbers. Numbers that more than likely corresponded to coordinates, which corresponded to where Stark and Wilson were because if that was the plane waiting for Baron von Strucker, then that was where they were going-

“Wait, aren't you-”

“We need to get back to the base,” he shook his head as he took one last look at May and Triplett being led into the plane, Ward following them with a casual smile on his face.

“But it's being attacked-”

“We need to find the Avengers...Ward just figured out where Stark and Wilson are being held,” there was no doubt in his mind of the veracity of the coordinates that May had spelled out after getting it from Ward, because he knew that Grant Ward wanted to find out about his past as much as he knew that Coulson wanted to find Stark and Wilson. He had heard Steve's whole conversation with Maria regarding the significance of the old HYDRA bases combined with what Fitz had found from the burnt remnants of Stark's Learjet. Coulson had always prided himself at being a cartographer when it came to the locales of the Howling Commandos' missions throughout World War II. But what none of them had figured out what that it was not where the known HYDRA bases in the Red Skull's era were located, but where they were not.

More specifically, it was the base where Sergeant James Barnes had been first found after he had fallen from Zola's train. And the coordinates that May had signaled to him put it in the Alps.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

 

So like my previous two stories, I like casting certain actors in my head to ensure some visual reference, tic, or a significant accent or verbal sound to characters in the stories. Strucker (or at least the person impersonating Strucker) has a specific actor in mind (the character's name I can't reveal because it'll be revealed later in the story). The real Strucker is obviously Thomas Kretschmann as he is in _CA:TWS_ and _Avengers: Age of Ultron_. When the person impersonating Strucker reveals his real face, I had in mind it would be portrayed by Damian Lewis. Just a little reference notice if anyone is curious.

There be a lot of ass-kicking in the next chapter.


	23. Chapter 23

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 23_

 

James' eyes snapped open at the first tremors that shook the walls, traveled across the floor and shook his bed. He had been-

_ It seared through his thoughts, burning in a fiery pain that he knew was so achingly familiar, but it was punishment _ .  _ They...they had done it before, had unleashed it and he tried to claw at it, but nothing would respond, he could not fight it as he slid into the darkness- _

He blinked again as the ceiling above shook and dusty plaster fell onto his face, tickling his eyes and nose. He wrinkled his brow against them and turned, automatically sitting up, casting his senses out. Something was very wrong, and though he vaguely recognized the area he was in, he definitely recognized the flame-haired woman – Black Widow, Natalia Romanova, on the bed next to his, her eyes narrowed to slits as she quickly assessed the situation, having also been woken up by the tremors.

“Security breach...” she murmured as she opened her eyes, another tremor shaking the area. She swung herself up from her bed, grabbing the earpiece left on a small end table near her and jammed it into her ear. She immediately began to fiddle with it, apparently trying to find an open channel to hear what was going on.

In the meantime, James looked around, assessing the situation. The tremors, dust, and plaster meant explosives had been used or were being used at the moment. This base had been built as a bomb shelter, at least from the murky faint memories of the place. They were still like liquid he could not quite grasp, occasionally seeing double visions, but he instinctively knew that this base was secure from the outside. However, once inside, that was another story.

He looked to his left and to his mild surprise, saw that the equipment he had carried with him from New York was propped up against the wall. A part of him knew instinctively that it was Rogers who had left his sniper rifle there- He stilled for a second...he had...he-

“ _ No one is responding, _ ” Natalia cursed in Russian and he turned his head to look at her as she stood up, lips pressed into a thin line before looking at him. “ _ You coming? _ ”

The corner of his own mouth turned up in a slight sardonic smile before he got up from the bed, reaching down and grabbing his equipment, sticking the knives that had been stripped from him, back into their proper spots on his tactical vest. “ _ I do not intend to be here when the building collapses. _ ”

She laughed, a short dark one and James could feel the odd yet satisfying familiarity at her laugh. He remembered Strucker babbling about how they had both worked together, but he also knew that it was the babble of a madman and could not be trusted. However, this...the lack of pain, the  _ familiarity _ this was what he could trust, could grasp onto and hang on as he felt the roar of the dull ache of pain in between his eyes return. The fact that he  _ knew _ her, not only from the achingly familiar memories that flashed across his vision, but from when he had first met her only perhaps days ago, was not lost on him. He could  _ remember _ and could apply it to the knowledge he had gathered for the past year since the destruction of the INT-Helicarriers. Since the last time- Since that chair-

He secured the last of his knives on himself as Natalia rounded the bed and headed out of the room, occasionally tapping her ear to see if she could get a signal. He reached down and grabbed the bag, shouldering it as he followed her out. If the building was about to collapse around them – the falling plaster and stonework pointing to all indications of that – he had no intention of leaving a useful and effective weapon behind; unlike how _he_ had been left behind, left on the remnants of the INT-Helicarrier because the target-because Rogers had been his target- _kill at all cost_ – it burned.

A very small part of him could see the irony of his statement and actions, could see that HYDRA had thought him as a weapon, something not human, just an object, much like he saw his rifle as one. But the difference was, he was not willing to leave it behind, abandon it, because he _knew_ his weapon. He _knew_ it, _knew_ he had worked with it, the obvious worn straps, and occasional scuffed or shiny screw placed it in telling him all he needed to know and then some more-

_“Maybe it's a good thing our regular inspections don't gig us,” Dum-Dum commented absently out of the corner of his mouth as they waited for the rest of the Commandos to be outfitted with winter climbing gear by Stark. They had gotten intelligence that Zola was going to be alone and away from Schmidt and it was a ripe opportunity to capture him._

_He shrugged as he absently fiddled with his scope. They had been trying to figure out whether or not they needed to make a combat jump onto the train – Steve trying very hard not to show that he wanted another combat jump star on his wings. Falsworth had not even containing his enthusiasm as befitting a member of the British paratroopers – but it had been decided that they would instead, intercept Zola's train on the move. It would be less risky than potentially getting shot down by machine guns, 88s, Tigers, and other things firing at them from the air. There was also the fact that the rest of the Commandos needing training at the jump school in Chilton Foliat near Aldbourne in order to even qualify for jump wings._

_To that end, Steve had ordered them outfitted with winter gear, close quarters combat, and he had been hoping to bring his sniper rifle with him. He had even given it a name – Marlene, after Marlene Dietrich. The iron sight itself had a divot in between, something that would have gotten him gigged if he was back in the 107_ _th_ _regular infantry. He had carved the divot himself, to help him scope better and had replaced two screws that had kept his scope a little more loose than he liked. The screws were so new that they shined each time light hit them that he had taken to caking dirt on them the first few times they had gone out into the field. All of it would not have been allowed in the regular army, even though every M1 or gun issued to infantry was given with strict instructions to treat it like one would treat a wife. Mostly it was just to maintain it, but he was grateful that he was allowed to modify his sniper rifle._

He pulled himself out of his hazy memories as he and Natalia cautiously headed out. The medical area was deserted, though covered in fallen debris at points, and he saw more than one body of the personnel either dead from fallen debris or from gunshot wounds. The fact that their area had not been disturbed meant that they had been bypassed – or the fact that half of the place had been crushed by debris meant that whomever had scouted the area was after something else.

That something else proved to be the armory as a deep rumble shook the base and the two of them paused in their cautious walk. The medical area had signs pointing towards the armory and they saw that the armory hallway was blocked by fallen debris and collapsed levels. There was already body parts sticking out from the slabs of brick, metal, rebars, and concrete and he saw Natalia stare at the hall for a moment before turning in another direction.

“We should get to Strucker,” she stated fiddling with her gloves before they lit up blue, snapping once with an small electric ozone pop in the dusty air. Even though he could only see the profile of her face, before she turned and forged ahead, he could see that she was readily furious with where they had woken up. She had experienced a trigger word like he had before then, he surmised.

He did not remember much, but he knew from the hazy, muddled memories, that someone had spoken something to him that seemingly shut everything down, darkness enveloping him instantaneously. He remembered the brief surge of panic, of flight, before the surge of pain, of a _burning_ sensation that seared through his mind, then...blissfully cold. The cold sent twitches of shivers through him, he remembered...the cold – and could not decide whether the cold was welcomed or the searing pain that always came before the cold. The man on the bridge – Rogers – that had been searing pain in the aftermath and he had feared the cold so soon after, but none had come- but had let them...because-

James gritted his teeth and curled his flesh hand to his side as he growled out to Natalia's back, “ _I'm cutting his tongue out_.”

Her body shook with dark laughter, “ _Not if I get to him first, Yasha_.”

_“Not if I get it first,” her smile was a challenge and he readily accepted it with the barest tilt of his head. A sense of curiosity did fill him as he wondered what trick she was going to use this time around. He knew everything the Widows had been trained to do, but Natochka, she was_ different _. He could not explain, and even when asked by the others, only said the things he compiled into his reports, but he knew that there was something different about Natalia._

_“Then this is your final lesson,” he murmured quietly, watching the pass of people around them in the park. Training was near an end, he and the others had evaluated her in all aspects of her training. Her challenge to him signaled that she was ready. He caught her shifting gaze, innocent, gullible for a second, before she slid them off of his face and continued her watch. She was good, he almost believed her gullibility and innocence, but knew that she had been trained well. The fact that she had successfully had her own trainers eliminated in the course of her constant evaluation was not withstanding. She sometimes personally eliminated them – but with good reason, they had succumbed to her charms – and sometimes he had been ordered to eliminate her trainers because of their stupidity in their evaluations of her abilities._

_“Survival,” her eyes seemingly passed over him again, but he caught the look from her once more – innocent, gullible – and realized what her true aim was and what she had been doing – warning him at the same time trying to seduce him with the innocence in her eyes._

He _was the last target. The last mission before training was over._

_And congratulated her on a job well done. Because all of her other trainers had been eliminated, because all of the others of the Black Widow Program had either washed out or had died in the process, those of the Red Room wanted to ensure that their final product would be able to best the one that trained her – the one that instructed her to survive at all cost._

_So he survived; kissing her hard in the mouth, drinking in her lips, her parted teeth the heat of her exhale- He was not was refined or trained as her, but deep down, somewhere – he_ knew _how to survive and because he had taught her-_

_“You will take me to the hotel you have picked out,” he breathed into her mouth, still feeling the heat of the searing kiss they had shared, their faces still so close together as he saw her eyes through his own lowered lashes. She had been pleased by his reaction, had mirrored it with her own – a Black Widow against him._

_“Charmed by his protege,” she replied with light sarcasm into his lips as she brushed a kiss against the corner of it and he had to smile against it. They both knew the consequences, the lack of consequences, what was to happen, what may happen, what may not happen- But both also knew that they were their most vulnerable here...in the park...and both of their self-preservation instincts –_ survive – _was kicking at them to do something about this particular mission. For those in the Red Room, it would be the greatest irony as well as the greatest feat for the Black Widow to successfully seduce her primary trainer and kill him for having the gall to_ be _seduced by the Black Widow and he made it look like she had succeeded._

_They both knew different – that now it was a mission of survival. Possibly a mutual survival, but survival nonetheless. There was the tug of_ something _between them, but whether it would turn into the two of them surviving – certainly not helping each other, their training taught they who they really were, killers – but perhaps ensuring something along the lines of surviving..._

_“Shall we then, Natochka,” he challenged her._

“ _You survived_ ,” he said as he forced himself to walk faster, to walk next to her instead of behind her, shaking himself out of that particular memory. He remembered seeing her silhouette framed against the drawn curtains of the room they had shared, sunbeams peeking in from the cracks, before an inexplicable blackness had overtaken him, a trigger word spoken to render him unconscious. Then...there was nothing.

She glanced at him, a sad smile on her face as she immediately picked up what had happened. She was more expressive now, her eyes telling him a lot that he vaguely remember her only learning how to use it. He had taught her the grain of truth in her lies made it easier to tell those lies. She had used it in her expressions, in her training, bits of truth in the lies that she told or showed. But somehow, he had always been able to read the real truth underneath the stretch of lies. And he saw that she had greatly changed...

“They took you away,” she murmured in English, helpfully making the memories fade away faster, as they made their way down the stairs, stepping over debris and fallen slabs, “I thought you died after they said something that cut you to the ground like puppet strings. Then...I think my own were cut and most of the memories of you were taken away. All I knew then, until a year ago, was that Yasha was my trainer. Who Yasha looked like, was just a vague blur.”

James was silent for a moment before he caught her quick look at him, not unlike the innocent gullibility one she had shown him, but one of mutual understanding. It was not compassionate, neither of them would accept it as such, but it was a respect that he could _feel_ that was shared between them. A second later, the look turned into a narrowed-eyed one as they heard multiple footsteps coming from above them in the stairwell as well as a half-flight down towards the doors that led to where Strucker was in the interrogation room.

“ _Ready?_ ” she switched back to Russian and he looked up, mentally calculating how long they had before reinforcements were sure to come down the stairs. The feet sounded too heavy to be regular personnel, the density of the sound against the concrete-it had to be HYDRA forces.

“ _Da_ ,” he replied before he kicked open the door with his leg, ripping it off its hinges where it cartwheeled and smashed into two black clad HYDRA soldiers, flattening them instantly.

Natalia was already on the move, skittering to the right where she immediately shocked a HYDRA soldier dead with her deadly Widow's Bite, twisting the body to the ground before flipping towards another soldier and forced him to the ground with another application electricity before grabbing a handgun on the belt and firing into the crowd.

James had drawn out a knife and had thrown it into the throat of a soldier before punching another one with his left arm, the whining of the metal powering up as he sent him flying into a soldier who casually threw him off, red eyes glowing as he brought his gun up to bear. He twisted into the path of a hapless regular HYDRA soldier thrown to the side by Natalia, grabbing him mid air and used his body as a shield. The body shook as bullets impacted the soldier and James could hear the choking death throes of the soldier before he surged ahead.

He pushed the dying soldier's body into the Centipede's one before taking another one of his knives out and rolled to the side, side stepping bullets fired from behind him and stabbed the Centipede soldier in the skull, killing him. He turned, pulling the knife out with a vicious tug, and threw it into the face of another one. At the same time he raising his left arm to block a hail of bullets. He grunted in reactionary pain as a couple impacted his kevlar, but ducked and lashed out, kicking one to the ground and finished him off with a stomp to the chest.

“ _Here!_ ” he reached out instinctively and caught the gun thrown at him by Natalia and flicked the safety off and fired, targeting the soldiers that did not have glowing red eyes, rolling and ducking this way and that as the Centipede soldiers fired back. The gun clicked empty with the five bullets left in it, five headshots before he threw it away and drew out another combat knife, twirling it in his hand as he saw the Centipede soldiers advancing in front of him as Natalia pulled herself against a half-destroyed door, guns in her hand. She was bleeding freely from cuts and ricochets and he too could feel tiny cuts and bruises gathered in the quick fight, but could also feel them knitting themselves back together.

The remaining Centipede soldiers that had not been taken out in his and Natalia's surprise attack tried to find cover amongst the broken doors and side rooms of the floor that they were on. Beyond them, he could see that the floor had half collapsed, allowing access from the floor above to this one in a ramshackle ramp of sorts. Strucker was beyond the debris pile and James fervently hoped that Strucker had been crushed by debris, he also knew that the man who was had a big part in creating the Winter Soldier would not die in such an easy fashion.

He could hear the pounding of footsteps as HYDRA reinforcements arrived behind them and suddenly stepped to the side as two grenades bounced in from the stairwell behind him. Natalia immediately reacted by kicking one of the two grenades towards the Centipede soldiers and he picked up the one rolled towards him and threw it. The first one exploded, sending chunks of body parts flying through the air and the second one was batted away by one of the Centipede soldiers into the wall behind him, leaving a crater.

However, the two of them already moved, Natalia twisting around to the other side of the door to fire towards the soldier pouring in behind them while he surged ahead. He ran, leaping and kneeing one in the face and rolled with him to the ground, hearing the familiar cranking sound in his arm as he punched another in the gut and twisted the soldier in the neck before swiftly kicking one with a snap-kick that sent him flying against the grenade-made crater, impaling him on a rebar.

Out of the corner of his eye as he blocked a blow from a Centipede soldier who charged at him with a knife, he saw the body twitch, and was about to think nothing of it before it twitched again. There was something not right- He quickly disarmed the Centipede soldier and stabbed her in the eye with her own knife as the body twitched again- Something was trying to get through from the _other_ side of the debris- James' eyes widened as he suddenly ducked at the sudden implosion of debris, shielding his eyes from the dusty debris, coughing choking air, concrete and brick pieces flying through the air as through the dust he _saw_ the familiar red-white-blue shield surge forth followed by the blur of blond-hair and armored form holding the shield like a battering ram, from where the crater used to be.

Agony ripped across his mind as instinctively jammed his fingers against his eyes to try to stop the pain-

He only had the barest warning of ozone smell before _lightning_ poured forth from the hole created, and James barely flattened himself to the ground in time, noting dimly that Natalia had done the same behind her door, trying to make herself as small as possible. Through the haze of pain searing through his head at the sight of Rogers who leap to the side and threw his shield, hitting Centipede soldiers as well as regular HYDRA soldiers who had panicked with the chaotic nature of what was happening, he could see the lightning burning at least one wholly alive, blackening the soldier's skin-

And just like that it disappeared and James let his instincts take over, rolling to the side to avoid a survivor's blow and flipped himself back up with his hands. He twisted into the soldier and ripped the assault rifle from the man's hands, breaking them at the same time sending the butt up towards the man's chin with a sickening crack. The soldier fell to the ground dazed as he flipped the rifle into a familiar grip and fired, killing him instantly.

He turned, targeting the remaining soldiers as Captain America's shield bounced all over the narrow corridor, Rogers chasing after it, catching it and releasing it as the silvery glint of a hammer made its presence known. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the burly armored form of Thor wearing a somewhat intimidating, but ridiculous – in his opinion – red cape as he threw and caught his hammer, smashing soldiers that kept pouring forth from the stairwell.

James targeted the soldiers that were not Centipede, firing his assault rifle as he took cover behind a slab of debris kicked up by lightning, still feeling the heat of it through the concrete as Natalia also resumed her firing. It was over in less than twenty seconds, the final kill going to him with a burst of fire from his acquired weapon before he trained it squarely on Rogers who had ended up in front of his line of fire. He could feel the burning need, the sensation of crawling, clawing agony that demanded he kill Rogers, kill his target. It nearly overwhelmed him as he stared down the iron sight of his rifle, his finger just hovering over the trigger as he stared back at the simple blue eyes-

_His eyes were blue and they were-_

He could sense both Natalia and Thor cautiously taking steps towards him and flicked them an angry glare, a warning to _not_ come closer as he saw Rogers staring back at him, his shield held in his arm, but not covering him. It _hurt_ even more so than when he had first arrived at the Avengers Tower. It hurt and it demanded that he finish his mission, because Rogers _was_ the mission and there was nothing else-

He suddenly wanted Rogers to say something, say anything to demand that he put his weapon down; to even try to warn him, that he would not harm him- He wanted him to say _anything_ because it would be so easy for him to shut up that voice- ' _I'm not going to fight you Bucky...you're my friend_ ' – because it would be so easy...

His breath was ragged in his ears as his world narrowed down to the sight he had, having stood up to face his target, weapon pointed. He had _shot_ him before. Four bullet wounds on the INT-Helicarrier. It was so easy now to pump him full of lead, to end that look-

_His eyes were blue-_

_And they-_

_They were-_

Rogers was such an idiot. He could _not_ pull the trigger and this was his chance – _you fucking idiot! Get the fuck out of the way!_ \- he screamed internally. He was giving him a chance-

He needed to survive-

Rogers was his target because it wasn't a test, because-

Tests had time limits, all tests had time limits – that was what made them tests. Because he had said fuck the test, he did not _care_ about the test-

_He_ would decide when Rogers would die-

Something seemingly snapped inside of him and he lowered his weapon, ignoring how much it _hurt_ seeing that small smile on the target's face, ignoring how much it _hurt_ right in between his eyes, right behind his eyes, pounding the need the urgency for him to finish the job – _I'll decide when to do it!_ \- as he turned and stared at the hole that Rogers and Thor had come through.

“Strucker,” he demanded, forcing himself _not_ to flinch, not to automatically raise his mechanical arm up and twist Rogers' neck as he stepped close to him. Not so close for him to make an effort to reach out and grab him, but close enough that he actively fought through the pain and agony and decided to take a side step to the left to somehow try to lessen it. He could see the bleeding head wound Rogers had sustained prior to the fight, the seeping blood already drying. There were other blast marks and ripped parts of his uniform to indicate that he had been in an explosion of sorts, but he also knew that Rogers would not necessarily say he was injured even if he was.

“I think he escaped after he set off that explosion of magic. He's not human, that's for sure,” Rogers answered him lightly, making no move to come closer.

James growled quietly in frustration through gritted teeth and tightened his grip on the assault rifle he held – Strucker had escaped.

“The mage knew how to walk through the shadows of Yggdrasil,” Thor said and none of the words made sense to James, but it seemed that both Natalia and Rogers understood it well, both of them digesting the information with a glint in their gazes.

“Loki's involved?” Natalia in particular sounded not too happy.

“No,” Thor shook his head, “my brother is not involved, but it does not discount the fact that whomever this mage was, impersonating Strucker, had been in exile for a very long time; long enough to have gathered that much power to unleash at us, disguise himself, and walk the shadows of Yggdrasil.”

“Impersonating Strucker,” James caught that statement and saw the burly blond-haired man who spoke with an unusual diction and syntax, apparently not of this world according to the files he had read, look at him and nod.

“There was deception afoot,” Thor replied with a solemn look, “you were not the only one to have been deceived by such tricks.”

“Strucker exists,” he did not readily believe that the person he had dragged back from the hotel room; had _willingly_ spared all because Rogers wanted proof, was not Baron von Strucker, the man he had seen in Rogers' sketches. The man who had cause so much pain-

“ _He does_ ,” Natalia suddenly answered in Russian and he glanced at her to see the same steely glint in her eyes – that she also believed that Strucker existed no matter what was said, “ _and we will find him_.”

He felt the curl of a dark humor rise up in him, the challenge, “ _Not if I find him first_.” She laughed in response and somehow, he thought it lessened the sharp pain in his head just a little bit.

* * *

Maria brushed the sweat-matted bangs out of her eyes as the last of the HYDRA soldiers fell with a cry and peered out from her cover. She cautiously stood up, gun pointed downward in case any HYDRA soldier survived, but the hanger was silent save for the moans of the injured or dying.

“Sweep for wounded. Get them up to the surface and alert Scotland Yard as well as MI5 that they're HYDRA and they can deal with them,” she ordered Alpha and Victor Teams before turning to the Medical personnel that had made it out of the ward before her evacuation order, “treat any you can, but get ready to move them.”

“Yes ma'am,” they answered before she tapped her comm.

“Hanger bay cleared, prepare for evacuation. Anyone who's on the channel-” she suddenly winced as a squeal came over the line as did several other people, reacting visibly to the noise before she heard Steve's voice on the line.

“-debris too heavy, even for me to move...no, Thor, that's just going to make it come down on us-”

“Captain Rogers?” Maria was so glad to hear that Steve was all right and apparently also Thor judging by how he addressed him.

There was the sound of something muffled in Rogers' voice, “-Channel 5 security Natasha-”

“Agent Hill?” Natasha's voice sounded ragged, but alert.

“Status report Agent Romanov,” she asked.

“Medical is deserted, Armory is trapped, no active sounds of survivors in either area,” she reported immediately and Maria could see some of the personnel around her who were also patched into the general comm line faces' falling at the news. “Prison cell block level is demolished, Strucker has escaped. There is no visible entry way towards the upper levels-”

“Secondary garage is below you, three flights down from the prison level. Passcode Abraxas-Victor-Two-Delta-Niner,” she immediately chimed in, “Agent Richards, how long do we have-”

“Everyone's evacuated up here, I have people sweeping the known areas, but HYDRA's still coming in at entry points Foxtrot and Juliet, but everyone should be making their way towards the hanger bay. I've set the self-destruct for fifteen minutes,” the young technician replied back.

Maria looked around the gather personnel, “You've got less than fifteen minutes folks. Move it!” They began to move faster and Maria spotted Fitz, Simmons, Dr. Foster, Dr. Selvig, Darcy, and Ian, Dr. Foster's other intern, hurrying towards the giant modified 747 that was affectionately known as the Bus. There were a few others also going towards it, helping carry equipment, but they looked to be moving slowly. Whatever the equipment was, it was probably needed. She pointed to one of the members of Alpha Team that was heading back to her after doing a sweep of the hanger bay.

“Ma'am, we found three survivors, they're being moved by Victor Team to the surface,” the Alpha Team agent reported and Maria nodded.

“Help Dr. Foster and her crew get their equipment settled. Then relay the rest of your team to ride on the Bus, I'll take the pilot's chair. Victor is to report to their evac point and ride with the rest of the wounded Medical is loading up.”

“Yes ma'am,” the agent saluted before leaving. Maria knew that she could have easily just directed the agent with a few hand signals, but she also knew that Thor would be completely agitated without finding out what happened to Jane and wanted to verbally reassure him through Natasha and Steve's earpieces of what was happening.

There was the dim sound of beeping before Natasha's voice came over, “We found it. Good luck Agent Hill, we'll see you on the other side.”

“You too Agent Romanov, Captain Rogers,” she replied before the click in her ear told her that Romanov had shut off the channel. There was nothing more that could be done now. The Avengers were going to continue their mission to find out where Tony and Sam were, as well as Strucker's whereabouts and the mysterious Vasily Karpov, Natasha's words said as much. It was now her job to ensure that whatever was left of SHIELD survived and was successfully evacuated to the Avengers Tower in New York. She could only hope that Coulson and Skye had better luck with Ward, May, and Triplett's mission.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

One step forward, two steps back for Bucky. You can try to hug him, but I dunno man...he's kind of volatile at the moment. And armed with an assault rifle. And a bunch of knives. And a sniper rifle. HYDRA was and still is very cruel to him; and to Natasha too with the final Red Room training test.

Side note: if anyone is interested in a more “realistic” take on the events of _Captain America: The First Avenger_ I have a 5-part one-shot series that I wrote a couple of weeks ago that also crosses over with _Band of Brothers_. It can be found on AO3.

 


	24. Chapter 24

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 24_

 

The four of them had found three military-style jeeps, soft-tops with the tops already taken off, covered in tarps in the garage that Maria indicated that they could use. They took one, leaving the two others in case any other survivors who had been patched into the general comm line found their way to the garage and escaped. Steve drove, Natasha in the front passenger seat while Thor and Bucky rode in the back, both of them outside. Bucky had taken his sniper rifle and put it together while Steve had driven out of the unused tube tunnel the small garage was located in, and was looking around, alert for any pursuit.

The unused tunnel lead out to a run-off area and Steve turned, intent on merging onto one of the major highways to take them outside of London. Natasha said she had a safehouse for them to change into less conspicuous wear. She then suggested taking the Eurostar eastward towards Paris to another safehouse where they would be able to plan their next move with a contact of hers. Steve did not exactly understand spy-talk, but he understood that whomever was in or around Paris, was someone that Natasha could readily trust – which meant it was either Barton or Fury. His money was on Fury considering the last time he saw the former Director, he was headed towards Europe, but he had been wrong before.

London traffic was light enough that Steve did not have a tough time weaving in and out of cars. He had merged onto Brixton Road to get to the southern parts of the M25 Orbital, when he heard the hollow thunk of Bucky bracing himself against the back of the jeep and then the sudden loud report of the sniper rifle going off. There was movement in the rearview mirror and Steve glanced at it in time to see a dark black SUV swerve, barely righting itself before driving at a much slower pace, one of its front tires blown.

The charge of Mjolnir getting ready to fire made Steve reach behind and pound the glass. “Thor! Don't hit any of the other cars!” He did not want to involve the innocent civilians in this, not like what had happened on the causeway. There was also the fact that they had not merged onto the motorway area yet and was still subjected to stop lights and storefronts of a major local road.

He knew that back home, the local and national media blamed him not for the wrecking of the INT-Helicarriers, but for what had happened on the causeway. There had been a lot of civilians injured and dead from the ambush. But there were a lot of the media pundits and analysts who also blamed HYDRA for many of the injured, some calling it so far as a homegrown terrorist attack. He did not want a repeat of what had happened in D.C. to happen in London; not with both the British people and military forces on edge for the upcoming 10th anniversary of the London Bombings. It was not lost on him that the British people's opinions of SHIELD and the Avengers was going to be down after Maria collapsed the base. There was also the possibility that any significant damage might alert the British military to mobilize faster and intercept them. They did not need any roadblocks that would trap them with HYDRA forces currently pursuing them.

Natasha glanced behind and narrowed her eyes for a moment, before drawing out her handguns. She quickly checked her magazine before opening the passenger side window. Mjolnir roared with a booming crackle before Steve saw a few cars swerve, but Thor's shot was true, hitting the disabled SUV square in the grill, lightning playing over it and shutting it down. One or two black-clad personnel got out, but they were already specks in Steve's eyes as he kept driving. He glimpsed two more black SUVs racing ahead of their disabled companion and pressed on the gas pedal a little harder, focusing back on the road. They finally cleared the city streets and was now on the motorway part of Brixton Road.

Natasha shouted something in Russian, sticking her head out along with one of her guns, but did not fire as a frown appeared on her face, apparently having no clear line of sight. Steve barely heard Bucky say something back in quiet, tight tones over the roar of the A23 and cars honking their horns at him as he weaved in and out of light traffic. Natasha ducked back in and shook her head, twisting in her chair so that she was facing the opposite direction and lifted a gun to point towards the back window, hoping for better shot.

“Centipede soldiers running on foot,” she said, “two cars, one which looks like might be just regular HYDRA-”

It happened so fast even with the super soldier serum running through Steve's body that to him it was almost like being on the causeway again, reacting with only his instincts to guide him. Natasha suddenly slammed back against the dashboard with a quiet pained cry sliding down a little, a _very_ familiar arrow sticking out of her right collarbone before the next barely missed the top of her head and embedded itself against the dashboard slicing off a few strands of hair. Steve twisted back to see that the path of the two arrows had made a neat little perfect hole in the rear glass, threading a tiny gap in between the seats. Natasha just so happened to have leaned towards it, her shoulder taking the first arrow, momentum making the second one miss.

“Agent Barton!” he heard Thor shout just as he turned back and saw the arrowhead sizzle and _melt_ , dripping acid all over the dashboard and Steve realized was _eating_ into the major electronic components on the dash itself-

He reached over and grabbed Natasha, pushing her upright against her chair, away from the acid. She blinked sluggishly, her eyes glazed over in pain just as Bucky fired several rounds of his sniper rifle-

Then the hollow _thunk_ of something embedding itself-

Beeps that was loud then fading at the same time a ripping sound of metal-on-metal-

Mjolnir firing again-

Steve suddenly slammed into the wheel as an explosion _shook_ the car, sending him swerving as he gripped the wheel with one hand, the other pushing Natasha against her own chair to prevent her wound from being jarred as she grabbed onto the sides of her seat. He heard a thunk followed by the horrific sound of screeching and saw the flash of silvery metal in the rearview mirror before what looked like Bucky tumbling from the back of the jeep.

He slammed on the brakes-

“No! We have to go-” Natasha was still dazed from the pain, but shook her head.

“I'm not leaving Bucky!” Steve said as he heard the honk of several cars and made to at least back up to pick Bucky up-

“Steve we're sitting ducks-”

That's when his world flipped end over end as another explosion sent them cartwheeling through the air. Steve only got a brief glimpse of Thor landing and rolling to the ground, Mjolnir in his hand, blood caking the side of his head and one of his arms before Steve grunted at the sudden impact of the jeep landing heavily upside down. The seatbelt pulled and tugged at him as gravity worked against him and he scrambled for the latch, unbuckling it with a breath of relief. He glanced over to see Natasha squeezing her eyes shut, her hand gripping the shaft of the arrow that had broken on impact. The head itself was still embedded in her collarbone, and she was holding it, but did not rip it out. He could feel the bruises from where the seatbelt dug into him and also from his previous injuries when Strucker had sent the explosion towards him and Thor earlier.

“Natasha-”

“Can't,” she hissed out, clearly in pain, “barbed arrowheads, Clint you fucking bastard...”

“Barton?!” Steve had not wanted to believe the initial fact that it was _arrows_ of all things that was being fired at them, but at the same time, just hearing it from Natasha... He shook his head and pushed the thought that Barton had actually _attacked_ them, eerily like when he had attacked the Helicarrier, out of his head and kicked at the door to the jeep. “Natasha, can you-”

“Y-Yeah,” she grimaced as she reached over to unlatch herself from her seatbelt as he scrabbled behind him and fingered the edges of his shield, still kicking at the driver's side door. He could hear screams of people and cars screeching to a halt on the junction between the Orbital and Brixton Road, along with the roar of Mjolnir. The lack of the sniper rifle report worried him, but the fact that the air was filled with the loud buzz of assault rifle fire meant that Bucky was probably hiding behind a car or something, unable to get a shot off – at least that was what he hoped. There was also the fact that he knew that they had not been fired upon yet, which meant that either Thor or Bucky, or both were keeping the pursuing HYDRA forces off of them for them to escape the deathtrap that was the jeep.

He kicked again and the metal squealed and bent like cheap tin foil before it flew off of its hinges just as an ominous beeping sound came from the acid-eaten dashboard. There had been an extra explosive in the acidic arrow, more than likely designed to go off through the sparks of acid-dissolved car wiring in the dashboard. Steve met Natasha's eyes for a split second before they both scrambled, sliding and squirming out of the bent metal, sliding over broken cracked glass. Steve saw Natasha free his shield, taking it with her, as he got free of the car-

And was promptly thrown into the air by the explosion. He landed hard against the opposite side of a car screeching to a halt and rolled several times onto the concrete before his body hit the grassy ditch by the side of the motorway. Steve instinctively shielded his head and neck from the hard bouncing impact, his breath leaving him as dizziness assaulted him. At the same time he felt bits of rock, branches and bramble cut into the exposed parts of his uniform that had not been shot up or destroyed in their initial escape from the base. He blinked his eyes owlishly, touching the side of his ear as he felt something liquid-like dripping from it and saw that it was blood. His eardrums must have been damaged, considering that the world was spinning a little in his eyes, and his hearing was muffled. He swayed unsteadily, having half a mind to keep his head down as he thought he heard the report of Bucky's sniper rifle, and thought he saw the flash of silver behind a small car a few hundred feet away to his front and left. He definitely heard the muffled rattling sound of bullets being fired followed by a hollowed screeching sound as something large, possibly a car, crunching across the concrete and a scream in the distance.

Steve shook his head, biting his lip as it made the dizziness momentarily worst before he heaved himself up and staggered to his feet. He looked up in time to see a large van plow through the small median on the opposite side of the motorway, skid to a stop and the back doors open before the metallic _roar_ of the Destroyer gun burst forth, obliterating everything in its path. The powerful blast disintegrated half of cars, concrete, and plant matter as it cut through several HYDRA soldiers firing on them before the others fled, the lone remaining car backing away in a hasty retreat.

“Come on!” he thought he heard Coulson shout and wave his arm at him, but whatever it was, the motion and gist of it was the same as he half-crawled, half-ran out of the ditch. A strong arm grabbed his own and he glanced over to see Thor helping him, his legs still unsteadily propelling him forward before he half-crawled onto the back of the van, looking back to see Bucky guiding Natasha, who looked almost like he did, except she was clutching at his shield like a security blanket. It must have bore the brunt of the explosion and protected her judging by the burnt blast marks on it. Bucky was not quite touching Natasha to guide her, but hovering close enough as she climbed up and he followed. As soon as Bucky was in, Coulson reached over and closed the doors before shuffling past them and banged on the other side. “Go! Go!”

The van screeched forward and Steve blinked owlishly again as a wave of dizziness assaulted him. He wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and ride out the nausea and concussion symptoms, but was also acutely aware that just a little while ago, Bucky had barely restrained himself from killing him again and was now armed with his sniper rifle and they were nearly sitting across from each other in the cramped quarters of the van. He could _feel_ Bucky's sharp eyes on him, could feel the heat of an unspoken warning in them. He knew that he needed to push past his own discomforts to ensure that no one would be getting killed or the van ripped apart just because he could not handle a mild concussion. Steve was also aware that Coulson, half crouched, half kneeling with his gun propped to the floor steadying him against the sway of the van, was staring back and forth between the two of them before flicking looks at Natasha. It was clear that Coulson was concerned about what would happen between the two of them, but was more worried about Natasha than anything else.

Natasha looked barely lucid and coherent and instead, was staring blankly at the ground, clutching his shield like her life depended on it. Steve could see that the broken shaft of the arrow was still embedded in her and like his own ears, hers were also bleeding. Thor sat next to him, uncomfortably cramped in the small van. Steve blinked again as he gritted his teeth against the new wave of dizziness, blinking his eyes rapidly to try to prevent himself from actually closing them to rest. Maybe it wasn't as mild of a concussion as he thought it was. He felt like he was going to throw up-

“The Cyclone was worse Rogers, suck it up,” Bucky suddenly growled out and Steve blanched and looked up to see the tiniest dark _humor_ in his friend's eyes even though the tenseness of his body belied the danger he exuded.

He stared dumbly for a second before the bubble of laughter emerged from his lips, quickly becoming a full-throat chuckle before he closed his eyes and shook his head, wincing at the movement. Letting his head rest back against the car, he allowed himself to relax just a little bit as his chuckles died – that was the surest sign as any that he knew Bucky wouldn't kill him at this moment.

* * *

The dressings were battlefield-grade, but it was adequate enough for Steve as he could feel the bruises and wounds begin to heal even before Coulson had patched him up as best as he could. The Director had even admitted that it had been a while since he had taken classes on being a field medic, his area of expertise being more of a sniper scout than patching up people on the battlefield. Skye, who had been driving the van looked rather pale as Coulson turned to work on Natasha. The Eurostar rocked a little on its tracks as it sped through the Chunnel, non-stop to Paris after they had escaped HYDRA's pursuit.

After Coulson had done a quick cursory examination of Natasha in the back of the van, he had called someone on his phone and had a very curt, short conversation that ended with him directing Skye to drive them to the nearest station for the Eurostar. A train was already waiting for them, the platform cleared out of people when there were clearly commuter cars parked everywhere. Coulson had directed them to a car where he then pulled out his phone again and spoke into it before the windows dimmed and the doors locked. Task done, he had thanked whomever he was talking to on the other end of the line before giving the phone to Thor with instructions to incinerate it with Mjolnir, including the SIM card.

Coulson had only said that a certain quartermaster at MI6 had owed him a favor and he had cashed it in by using one of the most secure cars the Eurostar had in its fleet. Apparently it had been designed as a mobile bunker, complete with medical suite partitioned off by modules within the train car. The medical suite was advance, built for surgery, but it was also clear that it needed a surgeon in it to operate a majority of the equipment in there. But they made do with the numerous bandages, antiseptics, and tools in it.

“Broad-head, barbed...” Coulson was staring at the x-ray he had taken of Natasha's collarbone and shoulder as Steve finished gingerly dressing himself back into his armor, mindful of the bandages and wounds that the kevlar pressed upon. His initial concussion was fading, and while he still heard Coulson's voice like it was from the hollow end of a tube, it was rapidly improving, the serum doing its work to heal him as fast as possible.

“Barton?” he asked, walking over carefully, still feeling a bit dizzied in his steps. He did not want to believe that Clint had actually betrayed them and was a HYDRA agent all along. He could easily believe that Clint had attacked the Helicarrier because of Loki's sceptre, but this...not after all they had been through, not after the Avengers. But he also knew that Clint had readily walked away from it – had quit SHIELD a year and half ago, six months before SHIELD had fallen to HYDRA. What was it not said that he could have easily found a HYDRA cell, betrayed them with all of their secrets, and enabled HYDRA to take over SHIELD that much sooner? Maybe Clint could have told Alexander Pierce and others that Nick Fury needed to be taken out, that he, Captain America was a big threat that needed to be controlled or eliminated.

But Steve did not want to believe that.

“...There's something else...” Coulson murmured quietly before pointing at where the tip of the arrow was wedged, thankfully, in between bone and muscle in Natasha's collarbone.

Steve peered at the x-ray and saw it. It was the faintest of black dots, underneath one of the three points that made up the broad-head. It could have been easily attributed to bone shards from when the arrow pierced Natasha, but the x-ray clearly showed that it was a clean shot, all muscle and no bone. Plus the bone was bright white in the x-ray. “What...is that?”

“Microdot,” Natasha breathed out quietly as she absently clutched the broken shaft, a faint sardonic smile on her face.

“Micro-what?” Steve looked back at her as out of the corner of his eye, he saw Coulson blinked in faint surprise.

“Couldn't he have found a better way than to _shoot_ you?” Coulson rubbed his eyes and sighed and Steve realized he was missing a very big piece in secret that both Coulson and Natasha had known.

“Agent Barton is not the enemy?” Thor spoke up from the module's doorway, confused. Steve could see Bucky's silhouette next to the door along the semi-opaque walls of the module, clearly cleaning his sniper rifle, but also listening to them.

Coulson shook his head, turning as he crossed his arms to address them. “No,” he replied, “Agent Barton has been in deep cover since he unofficially left SHIELD's employment six months before SHIELD fell. Director Fury wanted to know the whereabouts of Loki's sceptre after he left it here two years ago. Officially it was sent to the Slingshot with Alexander Pierce's signature, but unofficially Fury thought it went missing.”

Steve wondered if that was about the same time Fury had made inquiries into the whole Project Insight and discovered things about the _Lumerian Star_ , prompting him to hire Batroc. With twenty-seven shell corporations to Batroc's money, it probably took at least a month or two to funnel it all through without drawing Pierce's suspicions until after the _Lumerian Star_ mission was completed and Fury dead.

“Why Barton, sir?” Steve asked. As far as he knew, Clint _hated_ , vehemently _hated_ , anything to do with Loki or the sceptre. Of the two times Loki had come to the Helicarrier after New York, Clint was almost outright hostile to him and took every opportunity to point an arrow at Loki's head or make remarks that generally showed he did not care one bit about whether or not Loki was in trouble or needed their help – however reluctant and unspoken. Steve had tried to run interference on Clint as best as he could the last time Loki was here, but after he had succumbed to Jormungandr's poison and was laid up, he did not know what had happened. The fact that both Clint and Loki were still alive in the aftermath meant that at least Clint had not gone after Loki in his absence. Coulson's presence at that time probably also had something to do with it.

“Because of his experience with the sceptre,” Coulson answered before wincing a little, “and...because he told us that he could feel the sceptre's power. He thought he was going crazy first, but it seems like the whole business with Loki's coterie made him realize that he could actually feel it and actively resist it even though it wasn't used on him since before New York.”

“That's...”

“Fury authorized it,” Natasha spoke up, her voice still faint with pain, “except everyone knew by now that he was an Avenger and that he hated Loki and anything to do with him, sceptre included. It had to look like he decided to hell with SHIELD and quit. He had to be picked up by whomever had the sceptre as a rogue agent. Probably vetted through several times...”

“He could have been converted again with the sceptre,” Steve pointed out, frowning. It was a very risky plan in his opinion; one he knew he could never authorize if he was in Fury's shoes.

“But he wasn't,” Natasha flashed him a dark look, “and he knows the risk, like all of us. He brought me in from the cold, I know him.”

There was something in her words that made Steve swallow his protest, that it was an unnecessary risk, that it was the fine line of being wrong and being right. Something in Natasha's expression said to trust her, the same trust he had extended her while they were on the run, that if their positions were reversed, would he trust her with his life. His answer was still the same, he would. Instead, he said, “Is that where you went? After last year?”

She smiled faintly, “Yes. We didn't know that it was HYDRA until now, but he had intel and needed a point of contact after all of the files were uploaded.” The realization that the upload of all of SHIELD files had also burned Clint out of his deep cover was not lost on Steve as he grimaced a little. He could have easily killed Clint or been the one to damn him to the nest of serpents that was HYDRA. “I couldn't get into deep cover, but I at least was a viable drop point for him if he needed a quick out.”

“Until Tahiti came up,” Coulson muttered next to him and she nodded.

“And then all of this,” she waved her uninjured hand in the air, “Clint probably realized the extent of what was happening and needed to get intelligence out-”

“He could have easily joined up with us if he was with the HYDRA attacking force-” Steve started before Skye interrupted him.

“Or not destroy the base,” she said, clutching her laptop to her chest. She looked exhausted and smudges of dirt were still caked across her face.

“Unless he...” Coulson rubbed his chin, trailing off in thought.

“Why would he go back?” Skye asked, “I mean, if it's as bad as what's been happening, why go back?”

Bucky suddenly spoke up in Russian, drawing both Coulson and Natasha's heads to his shadowy silhouette behind the opaque wall. Steve realized that Coulson understood Russian, probably learning it from Natasha during his years of being her handler. Natasha replied with an inquiry and a raised eyebrow that got a curt reply back. Coulson added something else in Russian and another curt reply that Steve knew was the short-hand for 'yes.'

“You've got no one to blame, but yourself, Phil,” Natasha said dryly with a wiry look on her tired, pain-lined face.

“Seems like I trained people a little too well, for all the self-sacrificing we do,” Coulson pursed his lips for a second before looking at Steve, “James says that he got the Red Room signal from Barton for 'need help.' It's definitely not directed to any of the HYDRA soldiers because the signal was based on the person.”

Steve took a second to process what Coulson had said versus what he had experienced only a little over an hour ago on the motorway and realized that he had not heard Bucky's sniper rifle because his friend was also trying to make sense of the signal that Barton had clearly sent somewhere in that firefight while he was trapped in the car.

“He did miss bone,” Natasha interjected and while Steve thought that she was stretching the incredulity of Barton's shot, he had to admit she did have a point. Clint Barton had long shown that he was the master of his craft, a preternatural skill in making impossible shots even when his eyes were tracking elsewhere. It was similar to how he threw and reacted with his shield, able to think and move faster, plot and calculate trajectory as well as density, angle, velocity of where and when his shield would impact an enemy target, several targets, or just plain protect him from incoming forces. It was similar to how Bucky was able to make killshots from far off distances when all he had was his trusty sniper rifle and barely any modifications. Granted, he probably had a version of the super soldier serum in him, but Bucky was still a great shot back then and saved the Commandos more than once with his skills.

“I did observe Agent Barton shooting his explosive arrows in a manner that I was able to easily take them out of the air or return to his position with minimal resistance,” Thor spoke up quietly from the doorway. He looked a little pensive, but seemed to accept what both Natasha and Coulson were saying with some grace.

“That doesn't explain why he couldn't just easily join us,” Skye spoke up.

“Because if Clint's really near the sceptre and what Strucker, or at least the guy wearing Strucker's face, is saying about vibranium, and then about that machine having something to do with the Tesseract or Chitauri sceptre, it means that he's aware that Stark and Wilson are near it enough for him to risk going back...” Coulson trailed off, looking quietly blank for a moment before Steve caught the hint of anger in the Director's eyes. He had a feeling the anger was more directed towards Barton's apparent heroic streak in going back to somehow protect Tony and Sam than at anything else.

But it was also something that Steve knew Clint Barton would do. It also meant that they were now racing against the clock. There was the chance that if Barton reported back to whomever was really running the show; probably the mysterious Vasily Karpov that the red-haired mage mentioned before disappearing, then they needed to make sure Barton had the needed 'help' he requested.

“...What?” Skye asked faintly, still confused.

“Nothing for now,” Coulson waved away her question, “too long of a history and too many complications to explain.” The Director looked at all of them, “Ward signaled possible coordinates to where Stark and Wilson are. He, May, and Triplett were taken by Rumlow just as the base was attacked in London.”

“How do you know they're real?” Steve flicked a quick look at Bucky's silhouette, but he made no motion – at least none that Steve could see – to indicate he knew anything about Ward.

Coulson looked grim as he too stared at the semi-opaque partition where Bucky sat, “Because it's about the area where James fell from Zola's train in 1945.”

* * *

They arrived in Paris about two and half hours after leaving the greater London area. By then, it was decided to push the rest of the arrow through Natasha to get the microchip Barton had shot into her. The marksman had proven to be an even better shot when the damage was only limited to the Natasha's pectoral muscle cluster and had not even hit any bone coming out of her back. Steve had been the one to push it through, wincing as he realized it was probably the crudest method used since the Middle Ages. Natasha had taken it all in somewhat of a bracing grace, explaining that Barton probably could not risk having the arrowhead fall out while she was in combat and so used a barbed edge to make sure that it was hard to _rip_ out from the impact side without causing some serious bodily harm.

He had then broken the arrowhead before pulling out the shaft and let Coulson stem the bleeding hole on both ends and patch Natasha up before letting her rest. Skye had removed the microdot from the arrowhead with a pale face, washing it thoroughly before booting up her laptop to find out what was on it. She had only started to decrypt it when they had arrived in Paris and Coulson had transferred them through contacts called sometime in their two and half hour journey, to another private train car that was taking them to Strasboug.

The two hour ride turned into a chance for Steve to let himself rest, staring at nothing in particular as he could feel himself healing. Natasha had all but passed out in the seat next to him after finally returning his shield to him. Bucky sat across from the two of them, sniper rifle disassembled and put back into its backpack, but even he seemed, for once, content to just sit and stare at nothing. The fact that Natasha was sitting in between him and Bucky as a human shield even in her condition made Steve a little morose, but grateful. Thor sat in a row to himself, eyes closed, but Steve thought he was probably meditating instead of sleeping. Across from Thor and behind Steve was Skye typing away at her laptop, Coulson sitting next to her, apparently engrossed in whatever pamphlet was written in French in the car's back pocket.

There was no one else in their car, but the fact that they all clustered around and sat near each other was not lost on Steve. He was surrounded by his friends and for the first time since Bucky had ventured into the Avengers Tower in New York, Steve felt somewhat at peace. They finally had a destination, after he had given Skye his thumb drive of the map overlay created by him and Maria hours ago, and the first thing the microdot had revealed were coordinates that matched the ones Ward had signaled to Coulson. That at least proved that Ward was somewhat trustworthy in Steve's opinion, but Skye still seemed doubtful as did Coulson.

Steve was jolted out of his thoughts as the train slowed down on their arrival in Strasbourg and followed Coulson out, wondering why the platform was almost devoid of any passengers until he realized that they were the only ones exiting the train. They had been the only passengers on the train...

“More connectors AC?” Skye asked as they walked through the mostly empty station, the early morning hours more than likely filled with commuters, but for a Sunday, it was nearly empty. Still, there were those who stared at them and Steve realized that they probably looked rather scarily bedraggled, especially with bandages and half-healed cuts that were not bandaged.

“Nope, supplies,” Coulson replied, leading them through before exiting the station and heading into the city proper. Steve faintly recognized the buildings, but knew that he had never been to Strasbourg proper. He knew of the city, a few miles south of Haguenau which had been one of the main lines of resistance before the big push into Germany during the war, but had never really been in it until now.

Bucky murmured something quietly in Russian to which Natasha replied back and Steve blushed a little at the teasing _affection_ in her tone. He had not quite believed what Strucker had been rambling about during his first interrogation, but it seemed like there had been definitely something between Bucky and Natasha. However, he heard the slight defensive tone Bucky used to reply to Natasha, but also a returned affection in it that made him smile. Maybe there was hope that his best friend was at least regaining something pleasant in his memories instead of the constant horror and painful memories Steve knew he had been experiencing.

But it was not to last as Coulson finally led them to their destination, a small two-story building built like a cross between the French houses and Alpine ones of its border neighbor, and knocked on the door. It opened promptly to reveal none other than former Director Nick Fury.

That was when Bucky's programming took over and he attacked.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Steve is now on the list of Avengers-who-are-not-allowed-to-drive. Bucky's already made the list before he even joined the Avengers by ripping the steering wheel from Sam's car. Sam and Natasha (with some trepidation since my head!canon says she drives like a crazy person) are still allowed to drive, as is Coulson.


	25. Chapter 25

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 25_

 

No mission was foolproof, Clint Barton knew that the best since he had met Natalia Alianova Romanova – nee Drakova if one of the records they had found in a Red Room raid was true. Every mission had its inherent risks and gains and while any sane person would have taken the opportunity to rejoin allies, friends, to at least get away from the bad guys, Clint somehow always found himself surrounded by bad guys. Sometimes, he wondered if it made him a bad guy by proxy, but more often than not, Clint knew he  _ thrived _ on the fact that he was the only good, relatively speaking, guy who pretended very well to be a bad guy.

The whole Loki business involving the Tesseract was the only blot on his personal mental record. He knew it and it seemed Fury knew it too – otherwise, he would not have been asked to take on this insane mission. It also did not help that his cover was blown three months into his recruitment and he had to scramble quickly. It meant burning a few of his assets to ensure that his position was secure – something he had been reluctant to do since these were good men and women he had cultivated to be assets. But he also knew that the Chitauri sceptre posed a greater threat and he needed to ensure that it was not lost in the shuffle of HYDRA rearing its ugly head to take over the world once more.

But this time, Clint wondered if he had lost his touch by willingly walking back into the heart of the serpents' nest; pun utterly intended as he absently cycled through the remaining arrowheads he had in his pack. His fingers danced a random pattern across the buttons on the grip and riser areas of his composite recurve bow. However his mind was calculating what he had left of his arrowhead stock besides the usual broadheads he had. If there was not a chance for him to restock his explosives, then he at least could use the acid compound ones and spark an ignition of sorts. It would be wasting two arrows, but it would make do for now-

“Sir, starting final landing procedures,” the pilot's voice piped up in his ear as he felt the quinjet descend.

Clint pulled himself from his thoughts and took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a second. He quickly compartmentalized his thoughts, something he had done so many times for so many undercover missions; at the same time he brought out the bits and pieces that he knew would be there, surface thoughts that had roots to the deeper ones. Enough for Karpov to dig through and hopefully be satisfied. It was not unlike Loki rifling through his mind, a heavy hand suppressing it – no, Karpov was far more sinister with it and Clint played the fine dangerous line with it. He could easily read the doubts Karpov had about him, if he was fully under his control, but at the same time could see that age had made the not-quite-human man arrogant and blind to certain aspects. If Karpov suspected, then he was not putting too much stock into ensuring his complete domination of his mind.

But at the same time he also knew that Karpov was patient and eased into his control using the Chitauri sceptre. A brief malign thought, a moment of twisted hope, of uneasy despair, anything and everything to make him doubt that he was now stuck with HYDRA for the past fifteen months, one year since SHIELD officially fell. Loki just outright twisted his mind, forcing him to spill secrets, Karpov was more...refined if there ever was a praise for the sick way the two did things.

Clint knew that he could have easily joined up with Cap and the others back there, that he had all but been given the chance to let loose, to 'go off his leash' as he had said to Karpov earlier; any sane man would have done so, brought backup. But he also knew that someone needed to be here, needed to be a buffer zone, to ensure that Stark and Wilson were protected. There were doubts, that Karpov had so far not done anything to harm them except to leave the sceptre in their presence to slowly twist their minds, but Clint knew better. Karpov loved his long-term game and in this case, while he probably wanted to control Stark through the sceptre, probably saw the two as better fodder for bait for Captain America and subsequently the Winter Soldier.

Before Natasha had been grievously wounded outside Odessa by the Winter Soldier six years previous, he had the same thought as most of the intelligence community – that it was a ghost story designed to frighten new recruits. Even he had not seen the Winter Soldier actually shoot Natasha, but the fact that she adamantly believed it, believed the unmarked rifling of the bullet that tore through her and killed the nuclear phycist she was escorting, he believed her. He had long been her Supervising Officer and knew that while her trade craft was rooted in lies and deceit, he long trusted her and her intuition. Natasha was a survivor and would put forth whatever truths, whatever lies, to ensure her survival. That time, he knew that she was telling the truth.

The files on the Winter Soldier had been sparse for the past seventy-something years, but the profile was generally the same M.O.: unmarked Soviet-era rifling, silver metal arm with a red-star on the shoulder, and a 100 percent kill ratio for every target supposedly assigned or associated with the Winter Soldier. Sometimes there was collateral damage, sometimes not. There was only the barest general description for the Winter Soldier, supposedly white male, with dark hair, either brown or black. His time in the viper's nest with Karpov and Strucker told him that they were behind the infamous Red Room and the creation of many projects. He had told them of his previous missions to destroy the Red Room on behalf of Natasha Romanov, something he saw Karpov actually appreciate – if not to convince him that he had been turned again, but also because he needed to make sure he stayed alive long enough to get the sceptre away. Karpov had spent the last year since SHIELD's fall occasionally declaring he wished to see his weapon back among other things, but Clint had not realized that he meant the Winter Soldier until a few weeks ago.

Clint believed Natasha, but did not actually  _ believe _ until he had seen the bullet tear through the tire of the lead car he had sent first, lightning from Mjolnir finishing the car off. He saw the silvery metal arm, the red star, the brown hair, and the stare down the barrel of the Soviet-era  _ Dragunov _ sniper rifle. He knew that he had been somewhat visible from his perch on the back of the car, arrow drawn, and had his answer in the form of Natasha' red hair peeking out from the passenger side before she pointed a gun out. To any other casual viewer, it was an attempt to find a shot, but Clint saw the clear message:  _ ally _ . It indicated that the Winter Soldier was an ally, if Thor's presence next to him shooting bolts of lightning at them was not enough.

Clint had made his decision then, knowing that he had one chance and picked the broadhead with the microdot of all of the information he had compiled for the past fifteen months undercover in the HYDRA cell, shooting it as soon as he tracked Natasha turning around in her seat. He followed the shot with another; an acidic-explosive-timed arrow so that the others in the car with him would not doubt his intentions. He then quickly sent the signal:  _ need help  _ in hopes that either Natasha or the Winter Soldier, received it. He had gotten his answer by way of a slug that tore through the side of his kevlar, scoring the skin off of his ribs and leaving a very large bruise. The bullet must have also given him a few hairline fractures in his ribs as it currently hurt a little to breathe or to even move from side to side. But it at least told Clint that the Winter Soldier knew he was an ally of sorts. Otherwise, he had the feeling the bullet would have been fired a few more inches to his left through his heart.

The quiet thunk of the wheels touching down dragged him from his thoughts as he squared his shoulders, ignoring the pull and push of his armored vest against the bruises. He pushed the button to open the ramp and walked down, nodding curtly to the medical team that ran past him to treat the wounded soldiers that had survived. One of the few remaining Centipede soldiers was pulsating, the Extremis part of the soldier trying to regulate itself. If it overloaded, he knew it would not have the violent explosion of an Extremis-only soldier, but it would start a chain reaction that would end in the soldier's death.

Clint ignored it, walking down and away – all of the Centipede soldiers here were volunteers, HYDRA members, and not his problem at the moment. He could already feel a tugging sensation in the back of his mind, Karpov summoning him, but brushed it aside as he threaded his way through repair crews and other things going around in the hanger bay. His first priority was to check to make sure that Tony was still in his suit and not a mindless drone for Karpov to control and that Sam Wilson had not succumbed to the sceptre's crazy whispers and inherent madness. He had no doubt that Karpov had again placed it near them to mess with their heads, darkening their thoughts, but it was the least he could do without compromising his own position. Hopefully Cap, Coulson and whatever was left of SHIELD and the Avengers were on their way already.

“Hey, you!” the voice that suddenly shouted from across the hanger bay was familiar, but Clint did not acknowledge the call until he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising, the whisper of danger, and turned his head slightly to see Agent Brock Rumlow pointing a gun at his head, his hand steady.

“Yeah! You, Agent Clint Barton!” Rumlow said loudly and Clint stopped, taking a quick shallow breath and turned fully, meeting the barrel of the gun squarely even though it was at least several feet away.

Rumlow was standing in front of the stairs that led up to a pristine looking Learjet. Behind him, were a few other black-clad agents were escorting three other people off of it, all with their hands bound in front of them. Clint felt something sour in his stomach as he noticed it was Melinda May, Antoine Triplett, and Grant Ward. The last time he had seen May and Ward it was with Coulson's team. Triplett, he had heard, was with John Garrett, but it seemed that he had not turned like his mentor and instead, stayed loyal to SHIELD. While he had been here for the past fifteen months, he had heard rumblings about Garrett being the more public face of HYDRA after Alexander Pierce's demise and SHIELD's dissolution. Clint had only been familiar with John Garrett through Coulson's brief mention of having been one of the two agents Nick Fury had mentored at the same time. He knew what Garrett looked like, having joint missions with the senior Agent and his mentees, but other than that, Clint never really got a good read on Garrett. All he had figured was that Coulson must have been really angry to find out about Garrett's true allegiances. There was also the rumblings a couple of months after SHIELD's fall that it had been Agent Coulson and his little team that had taken down Garrett and a lot of Project Centipede which had been a breath of relief to Clint. He had been worried that Coulson had been killed in the ensuing chaos after HYDRA had burst forth from SHIELD; worried more for Phil than for Natasha because he knew Natasha, she was a survivor. Coulson...well, he survived and was revived, but he was also very human and Clint thought, sometimes a little too compassionate. He knew his close friend and former S.O., now his occasional handler, had a ruthless streak in him – courtesy of Nick Fury's guidance and mentoring – but Coulson was probably one of the more compassionate agents he had ever met, very similar in ways to Cap himself.

Karpov had asked him months ago who was the likely candidate to run SHIELD from the shadows since Nick Fury's death and Clint had mentioned Coulson without hesitation. He knew he had painted a giant target on the back of his friend, but at the same time, he felt a bit of pride in saying it. He had also cautioned Karpov that Coulson was not an idiot and should not be under estimated, something he hoped and had his hopes fulfilled to make Karpov hesitate and move carefully, but also to allow Coulson to build up loyal SHIELD personnel for the past year.

But the fact that May and Ward were here along with Triplett and the fact that he had seen Coulson out on the motorway, meant that he had them on a side mission that Rumlow had somehow intercepted. The last he had heard, Rumlow had been laid up in New York, caught by NYPD after the attack on the courthouse. He must have received separate orders that Clint did not know about and it unsettled him.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Rumlow's aim was steady and Clint met his sharp-eyed gaze with a neutral one of his own. He could see the slight shock in May and Triplett's eyes, but oddly, Ward's was narrowed, as if assessing him. He realized that Ward was trying to puzzle him out, to figure out if he was here undercover or if he really was HYDRA.

“Thought you got your ass kicked in New York,” Clint replied blithely, keep his grip steady on his bow. Rumlow with the gun was mostly an empty threat, especially with this many people in the hanger bay, but it was still a threat that he would not turn his back to.

“Wouldn't you know about that  _ Hawkeye _ ,” the HYDRA agent sneered, “oh wait, did you abandon your  _ Avenger _ code name?”

“You would know,” Clint countered, the corner of his lips curling in a sardonic smile. His 'quitting' of SHIELD was a very public, messy affair. He had yelled at Fury, yelled at Coulson, yelled at Natasha, a few others, and had quit, storming out with his gear. Coulson had even pulled a gun on him and said for him to leave his SHIELD issued bow and arrow and he had thrown his SHIELD issued gun and badge back at Coulson's feet while keeping the bow and arrows he had on him. He had then spent a month ignoring phone calls and visits from the other Avengers, all the while pretending to look for other agencies and private security firms that would hire him. Turned out a lot of private security firms wanted to hire a former Avenger and SHIELD agent and got employment after two months. A month into that, he was vetted into a more shadowy section of the private sector and quit his job by blowing one of their facilities sky high after finding out that they had been funding suicide bomber cells around the world – that had been a nice bonus and made him a bit happier in his undercover assignment.

Three months into his new employment, SHIELD fell and HYDRA emerged.

“See, I don't believe it,” Rumlow gloated loudly, bringing a few others' gazes on them and Clint only stared, unimpressed. “I mean, Hawkeye, of the Avengers. Upping and quitting like that-”

“You need not worry about Agent Barton's loyalties, Agent Rumlow,” Clint was glad that he had perfected his poker face as he suddenly felt two hands resting on his shoulders, squeezing in what could have been an almost fatherly gesture, if it was not for the sudden thrill of  _ fear _ running through him that he quickly buried deep into his mind. He had not even heard Karpov walk up nor feel any sign of him except for now the vague pressure in his mind. It was almost like the sensation of having someone rapidly open the metaphoric door waltz in unannounced.

“Sir-”

“Have I made myself clear?” Karpov's voice was benign, but Clint could  _ feel _ something electric in his grip on his shoulders that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. If he had not already known that there was something not quite  _ human _ about Karpov, he could feel it now. The pressure in his mind was almost eerily similar to Loki's utter domination and manipulation three years previous.

“Y-Yes sir,” apparently even Rumlow was affected as he lowered the gun and swallowed visibly.

“Good,” the feeling suddenly disappeared and Karpov's hands lifted from his shoulders. Clint let out a quiet ragged breath he did not know he had been unconsciously holding as the old man stepped forward, all pleasant smiles and dark cold eyes.

“Sir, Agent Ward was wearing this,” Rumlow stepped forward and handed a film-like material that Clint recognized as a photostatic veil, or rather a camotech that utilized nanobots and life-like imprint of a person's face. It had only been recently developed by SHIELD scientists with only two in known existence. He knew one had been given to Natasha right before he had left SHIELD.

Karpov reached over and took the cloth-like material, studying for a moment, “And what of your target, Agent John Bronson?”

“He did not arrive at his extraction point, sir,” Rumlow replied, “we found these three in his place.”

“Wearing a mask of the good Baron von Strucker,” Karpov finished for Rumlow with a quiet murmur before looking up at Ward, “I am surprised you remember after all these years, Grant.”

“Kind of hard to forget after the shit you put me through,” Ward replied and Clint flicked a look back to Karpov as he smiled a little. There was something venomous in Ward's tone and also a hint that Ward had a connection to Karpov that he was unaware of. Did Ward know Karpov or even Strucker from a time before he joined SHIELD? Was he even a loyal SHIELD agent if Strucker and Karpov were known HYDRA members?

“You haven't even aged a single day,  _ Uncle Vasily _ ,” Ward hissed quietly and Clint tightened his grip on his bow. Ward  _ did _ know Karpov, but based on his tone it could mean either he was friend or traitor and therefore a complete wild card.

“And you are still a failure after all that you were given-”

“The fact that I  _ gave  _ you these two hardly counts as a failure,” Ward suddenly said, “and that your lapdog here Rumlow-”

“Kid-”

“-couldn't even figure out that I wasn't the real John Bronson, Strucker, whomever you want to call him, until I actually took  _ that _ off, well...I say that I think I picked up a few things outside of the family unit, right?” Ward continued as Karpov held up a hand to stop Rumlow from making any moves against Ward.

“ _ Perhaps you have some merit, for all the Red Room training we had invested _ ,” Karpov suddenly said in Russian and Clint saw Ward frown a little, having understood what was said. The others looked a little confused at the sudden Russian.

He himself froze a little at the mention of Red Room and Grant Ward, wondering what Natasha knew about this. As far as he knew, she was the only product of the Red Room's Black Widow Project. The Red Room itself had been officially dissolved at the end of the Cold War, but the two of them had gone Red Room hunting more than once. There were various people involved, but they had ensured that no one else was a trained agent of the Red Room. What Karpov was saying...

“But your loyalties cannot be determined until they are tested,” the old man finished in English before gesturing to Rumlow, “escort your prisoners to the cells. Agent Barton will lead the way.” He turned his head slightly and Clint felt the compulsive pressure return. “You know where to put them Agent Barton.”

“I thought you wanted Stark and Wilson to be alone,” he ignored the compulsion easily and saw the barest twitch of a smile on Karpov's lips.

“It would seem prudent, would it not, to house these prisoners separate and spread the rescue party thin, would it not?” Karpov mused in a manner that unsettled him further, “but come now, do you not want to see your handy work?”

Clint frowned inwardly, feeling a little like a cornered animal that did not know it was cornered, before he adopted a congenial look. “Of course,” he agreed as Karpov's smile blossomed into a full one that did not even show his teeth and gestured for him to walk with him, one of his hands not quite touching the arrow pack he had on his back. The gesture was clear though and Clint followed, matching his steps with Karpov's as Rumlow and the others followed behind. He could feel May and Triplett's sharp gazes on him, could feel the calculation of whether he was friend, foe, or traitor. The only saving grace at the moment was that Karpov did not kill them right then and there, though Clint knew it was very precarious. Technically Stark and Wilson were enough for hostages to tempt the Avengers into rescuing them. Two, or three more SHIELD Agents was unnecessary. There was something sinister about keeping them alive though – to put more pressure on Stark and Wilson. That at least was the best option, even though May, Triplett, and possibly Ward would be tortured to try to break Stark and Wilson or to eventually drive them mad with the sceptre's subtle influence.

He knew he could easily break cover now, to at least free May and Triplett, maybe Ward if his mixed messages were to be believed, and shoot their way out. But there were a lot of HYDRA agents between him and where Stark and Wilson were being held not to mention he had no  _ idea _ what the hell Karpov was capable of. That was the sticking part of his plan. Karpov had already proven he was either very Gifted, or maybe not of this world. Then there was the matter of the sceptre. It was his original mission, to find out where it had gone and if he found it, to ensure that it was either properly destroyed or in SHIELD's hands where it could be sent to the Slingshot permanently. Even Fury had come to his senses and did not want to deal with it after everything they had gone through. Clint knew he needed back up, needed help and could not break cover, not now.

The walk to the cells only took a few minutes, but to him, it felt like hours and the closer he got, the more he felt like he was the one to be thrown  _ into _ the cell itself. He kept his grip on his bow tight, but did not fiddle with the buttons to switch from arrowhead to arrowhead. If Karpov did end up throwing him into one of the cells there, then at least he knew that the Avengers were coming, that Coulson was hopefully also bringing a taskforce too, to support the Avengers.

They were let in and Clint steeled himself behind his indifferent mask at the sight that greeted him. Outwardly, it looked all the same, Tony still hanging in his iron man armor, parts of which were warped from repeated exposure to high temperatures by the Extremis soldiers heating it up. He could hear the harsh breaths filtering out from inside the suit mingled with the smell of melted plastic. However, it was Sam Wilson who provided Clint with the knowledge of what had happened while he had been gone. The pararescue soldier looked pale, sweaty, and generally sick-looking. Dark circles ringed around his eyes and he looked like he had been utterly defeated. He sat, slumped against the wall of his cell, medical bag next to him, contents spilled all over the place. There were several ripped packets of what was probably painkillers or whatever was in the medical bag, white pills along with other colored pills spilled across the floor. Wilson must have hallucinated to the point where he was trying to drown himself in pills, but had resisted and sent it flying everywhere at the very last second. Sitting near the two of them was the glowing Chitauri sceptre, almost innocent looking except for the slithery feeling he felt in his mind when he had entered with Karpov and the others.

“...No...not you...not...” Tony's voice was faint, but understanble, his chains rattling as he lifted his armored head a little to stare at them. Clint realized, that Tony was looking at him and thought him to be a prisoner.

“Fortunately, Mr. Stark, your friend here is not a prisoner,” Karpov placed a hand on Clint's shoulder and he resisted the urge to flinch at the touch. Behind him, he heard Rumlow shuffling Ward, Triplett, and May in. Sam Wilson stayed silent, but his eyes tracked the movement mutely.

“Now,” Karpov kept his hand on Clint's shoulder as he turned slightly to address the three agents, “the prudent thing would be to have the three of you shot here to make a point.”

There was a slight abortive movement from Ward and Karpov smiled, “Yes, I am sorry Agent Ward, but your contributions to HYDRA have come to an end. You did your job well trying to keep John Garrett in line, but you have allied yourself with a faction that Agent Coulson took down so there is no way to ensure that you have not been compromised in the year since you have become their prisoner.” The weathered old man looked at the sceptre, “And I do not feel like expending the mental capacity to keep you under my leash.”

“...What...too busy doing that...to Barton?” Tony huffed out as his chains shifted a little.

“Oh, no, no, no, Mr. Stark,” Karpov answered, “watching that whelp of a mage dominate dear Agent Barton's mind as well as controlling Selvig has taught me my lesson. No, Agent Barton is here of his own misguided accord.”

Suddenly the hand on his shoulder felt a lot more sinister than Clint ever thought possible as he tried to quell the rise of panic that erupted in him. He needed to maintain his calm, maintain his cover; to not give away, to not get himself killed because he  _ needed _ to ensure that Stark and Wilson were okay, that Agent May, Ward, and Triplett were going to be okay-

“...Don't believe you...” Tony spat with a whisper.

Karpov gave a light chuckle, “It would be easy for me to demonstrate by having the good Agent here shoot his former co-workers, but it would also be foolish.”

Clint frowned a little – he  _ had _ been thinking of the fact that Karpov would have wanted him to shoot the three as a demonstration of his loyalty. But he also saw what Karpov had already saw, that arming him with a gun or allowing him to reach for an arrow was stupid as he could easily turn on him and Rumlow. He tightened his grip on his bow a little bit in frustration.

“No,” Karpov suddenly drew out a gun from the folds of his jacket and fired twice. May and Triplett dropped to the ground with gasping cries and both Tony and Wilson jerked. Wilson half crawled over to his bars of his cell, eyes wild-

“-You fucking bastard-” Tony pulled against the chains holding him, “Clint,  _ Clint! _ Do something-”

Clint could not move at the sight of May and Triplett bleeding out, their wounds not fatal, but serious enough that blood was already coating and spilling to the ground. Ward was standing stock still, face betraying nothing as he stared at Karpov. He could hear Tony yelling at him, to move, to break cover, to not pretend he was a lackey-

“You see?” Karpov put the gun away and the hand on his shoulder felt like a ton of weights, anchoring him to his spot. “He will not do anything, not even to save his former friends.” He suddenly gestured with a weathered hand and Rumlow and another guard came to life, opening Sam's cell and throwing both May and Triplett in, scattering the pills and contents of the medical bag on the ground, while Ward was unceremoniously shoved into Tony's cell.

“Clint- Clint...please, do...do  _ something _ !” it was hard to maintain his composure, especially at how broken Tony sounded, how ragged and exhausted he was, the suddenness of the situation suddenly screeching everything in his mind to a halt. He  _ knew _ he had to do something but-

“Agent Barton will do nothing because he  _ cannot _ ,” Karpov emphasized, “he  _ will not _ . You see, he is waiting for help to arrive, because he knows how badly he is outmatched right now. His acuity for survival is overriding every single one of his loyalties because I have allowed it. Agent Barton has done everything expected of him because of his misguided attempts to warn and bring the rest of your colorful friends here.

“I marvel at his resistance for my guidance with this” he gestured to the sceptre which Clint was starting to feel a bit sick around. The oily feeling penetrating his mind made him want to douse himself in water and scrub himself until he was raw. “Such is a rarity and perhaps best suited for him to track this down, but he does not realize how much he had been played for a fool.”

The hand on his shoulder tightened and Clint felt  _ pain _ in that grip, creaking into his bones, a vice-like grip he did not know such an old man like Karpov could possess. “Everything you have done since we...found you...you have been subtly guided to do. You may have thought you have independent thought around the sceptre, but in reality, you have been guided as much as it has colored the thoughts of your friends here. The efforts I have expended in trying to make you turn was a wondrous exercise, but I must thank you, Agent Barton, for if you did not give the microdot to Captain America and his friends, then I would not have the chance to retrieve my weapon.”

Clint felt like he was going to throw up as Karpov's hand left his shoulder, but the weight of what had happened lingered, feeling like he had been mentally pounded into the ground.

“Agent Rumlow, please prepare the base for an attack by the Avengers,” he distantly heard Karpov said as the door opened behind them and footsteps told him that they had left. But Clint stood rooted to the spot, staring at nothing in particular, feeling the oily sensation of the sceptre worming its way through his mind.

He had been played so badly that he thought he was being subtle about it and doing the right thing by sneaking out information to the others. Except all that he had done was lead the rest of his friends straight into an ambush.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Clint's having a heroic BSOD moment. You may hug him.

In other news, I am cackling like a loon at Episode 1, Season 2 of “Agents of SHIELD.” I totally called Ward in a prison cell underneath Coulson's bunker...though the location I knew I was wrong on – and no I do not work for Marvel. I just sometimes happen to guess things pretty accurately (and more often than not, results in me cackling like a loon while watching episodes or storylines unfold on TV). It's the little things like that, that warms my heart as a fan of the MCU and as a fanfic writer.

 


	26. Chapter 26

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 26_

 

His name...

His name was-

It clawed at him, threatening to drown him in the agony, the stabbing of knives deep into his mind _screaming_ to kill the target because – _three shots, there were three shots, he was pronounced dead –_ three shots. He had to _kill Colonel Nicholas J. Fury_. _Level 8 priority._ Level 8's were the highest priority of to-kill targets, he remembered that because they were usually the ones that were also the most dangerous. They were the ones he armed himself against any and all kinds of threats-

_Captain Steven G. Rogers was Level 6..._ no-

_Captain Steve G. Rogers, Level 8 priority_ -

Helicarrier-

_“Your work has been a gift to mankind. You've helped shape a century, and I need you to do it again.”_

Level 8, the highest threat-

Because there was no others to take care of such threats-

“ _Your work has been a gift-_ ”

Because he had the 'gift' to do such a thing-

“ _It has already begun...you will become HYDRA's greatest gift to the world. I think a name will do...the dawn of the winter of mankind...an everlasting winter...”_

_“Herr Doktor, how is my gift?”_

Scientists in lab coats, poking, prodding him. They drilled it into him, bore it into him because it _hurt_ the bone-numbing pain that he screamed, screamed so much against because they needed to see if he would cooperate- He had! He cooperated with them so could they stop the pain? He pleaded-

_“Kill him. Your pain will end.”_

They had promised-

They broke their promises-

_“We want to help you, if you'll let us.”_

“-cky, Bucky, Bucky, come on, please, _please_ , you can fight it! Don't- Don't let them...d-do this to you! Don't-” there was a choking, gasping noise that for a second he thought was out of his own lips as his vision blurred. He tasted the saltiness of something wet dripping down his face, onto his lips and blinked - tears. The double images of sterile rooms, of _his_ face staring down at him – Strucker- Zola- Strucker, no...Strucker, Zola and someone else...he was _ancient_ , old. He knew-

“ _I'm not going to fight you...”_

_Impossibly, the red-white-blue shield dropped, falling into the river with the fiery debris and for a second his breath hitched – no! Don't drop that! You need it you idiot! Who the hell is going to protect you- Protect you- Protect you from me!_

_“You're my friend.”_

The gasping noise returned and he blinked.

“...p-please...don't-”

He had pleaded. He had begged.

They had not listened.

“It's...it's okay...Buck. If...just...c-come b-back-”

His name-

Ja-

James-

James Buchanan Barnes.

Bucky.

It was akin to having felt like being slammed into the concrete several times as James took a shuddering breath and blinked his eyes rapidly. He twitched and shuddered as if he had just awakened from a deep trance only to see the gleaming metal of his arm outstretched, an almost unresistant Steven G. Rogers at the end of it, weakly, more than likely reflexively grabbing where his thumb and wrist joints were to pry it off of his neck. His face was bright red, and his breath was wheezing-

James choked himself as he suddenly forced himself to open his hand and Rogers dropped to the ground in a crumpled heap, gasping and rubbing his neck as he wheezed out harsh breaths. _Stevie? Should I get your mom? Wait, hold on, there's some ice here-_ He also realized that his other hand was holding an outstretched handgun, black, the grip fitted for hands smaller than his own... And saw that it was pointed straight at Natalia's head, right where Fury's chest was as she stood in front of him, her eyes blazing with cold determination, her glare of defiance to dare him to shoot through her- _I shot through her once_ – shoot through her again to kill his target-

It was an _effort_ for him to bury the agony that was pounding in between his eyes, searing through his mind to finish the job as he slowly lowered the gun he had acquired from Natalia. She was clutching her shoulder wound, blood gushing past her fingers and he realized that they had fought in the hazy fugue that he did not even remember fighting. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw broken pieces of furniture, bent pots and pans, weapons he had used to try to get to his level 8 target.

“I'll take this, Sergeant,” James almost twitched at the suddenness of Phil Coulson's voice next to his ear before he felt gentle hands pry his flesh and blood one open and he let him take the gun from him as he blinked and took in the devastation that had been wrought.

“I-I'm okay...Thor,” he saw Thor move from the corner of his eye as he knelt down and helped Rogers up, the tar- _My former target!_ A part of him screamed. Rogers was still rubbing his neck, but sounded a little less hoarse. He could see the compassionate look on the caped-man's face, but also of wariness and realized that there was the faint smell of ozone in the air. The hammer that Thor carried with him hung by his side, but was crackling with barely contained thunder.

“Sir-”

“ _What level was he?_ ” Natalia snapped in Russian, interrupting Coulson and James flinched a little at the harshness of her tone. She had never taken that tone with him- It was used for interrogations-

“ _Yasha! What level was he,”_ she demanded again and he felt himself swallow reflexively. He could feel the need to defend himself, to attack such harshness, because she was a Level 6 so he had no reason to prioritize her death over- No...she... They had helped each other, they had tried to escape. She used it because she was _surviving_. He had told her _to_ survive.

“... _Eight_ ,” he replied, blinking once at her and saw the curl of a sardonic smile on her lips as she finally relaxed. However, she did not move from where she was standing in front of Fury.

“Well, sir,” he saw Coulson clear his throat lightly before a rueful smile appeared on the mild-mannered agent's lips, “looks like you managed to piss of Pierce right off the bat instead of making your way through the levels.”

“He sent flowers,” Fury seemed nonplussed and James winced a little at the pulsating pain that still lingered. He wanted to rub his eyes, but knew that it was a useless gesture.

“What? I don't-” Rogers cleared his own throat, rubbing it absently and James bit the inside of his cheek, drawing some fresh pain to combat the feeling that his mind was going to explode from the double-waves of pain at seeing both Fury and Rogers still alive. It was _hard_ , even stripped of the gun he had taken from Natalia as they gathered around the inside of the French flat that had been Fury's base of operations. When they had entered he did not remember, but he vaguely recalled going from outside straight in and he supposed that the damage around the spacious room was evident that he had attacked and they had defended.

“Red Room targets get eight assigned levels, similar to the system SHIELD uses for clearance,” Coulson absently checked the gun before handing it back to Natalia who holstered it. “Level 8-”

“Means you are an assigned priority with maximum weaponry at your disposal. It's...also the ones that stay up here,” Natalia finished for Coulson with a pointed look at James as she gestured to her head. “It's the ones that somehow don't get erased even if they keep wiping you over and over again,” she finished quietly, “isn't it?”

Silence reigned in the apartment for a few seconds saved for the distant sounds of car horns and other city noises before Fury moved, stepping out from Natalia's protective shadow. “Well, glad to know that I've managed to piss off HYDRA twice to have two level 8s on my head.” The man gave him a one-eyed stare that somehow managed to make a very small part of him feel incredibly guilty – as if he was a fresh-faced soldier who could not follow orders. “You going to kill me or can I at least get some of the intel you've all put together and re-prioritize your target?”

That very small part of him that felt guilty immediately disappeared into a haze of indignation and he returned the stare with one of his own. Fury flashed a quick sarcastically crooked smile as he moved past the broken furniture and into another room. Natalia only gave him an unreadable look before she shrugged and followed, Coulson glancing between the two of them and also turned and followed, reaching over to Natalia and gesturing to her former bandaged wound now open and weeping blood again. He heard the shift and clinking of armored plates and turned to see Thor make a gesture of concern as Rogers stood upright on his own, still occasionally rubbing his neck. The so-called Thunder God – something he did not quite believe even as he remembered the bolts of lightning that poured forth from his hammer, Mjolnir during that flight on the motorway – looked at him carefully. There was something different in his gaze that was not quite compassion, but of something else he could not read, before following Coulson and Natalia.

“...Bucky?” that left him and Rogers in the mostly-destroyed room as out of the corner of his eye, he saw him take a step towards him.

“Don't,” he held up his metal hand in a warning even though it would be easy for him to shuffle a step forward and grab Rogers by the neck once more, choking the life out of him- “Don't...” he whispered again as squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, pushing back against the recent fresh pain. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, staring at no point in particular. He could feel Rogers standing just outside his arm's length, patient, seemingly just waiting. But he could also feel him on guard and a part of him was glad – the fact that he took it this seriously even though he was an idiot for jumping into the fray that he did not remember, having gone into a fugue state. He could have easily killed him then...

“But you didn't,” James did not realize he had spoken those words out loud until Rogers replied in a simple tone. No pleading, no compassion, just...oddly, James though he heard understanding; a statement of facts.

And somehow, he knew that it should have made him feel guilty, but it did not. It made him feel... He mentally shrugged – he did not know. Guilt was- Guilt... Guilt was if he regretted things...and...he did not because he did not finish his mission – so there was no guilt. Nothing to feel guilty for...

“Level 8,” he shot a quick look at Rogers and saw him give a small nod in return before the barest hint of a wry smile appeared on his lips, his blue eyes mirroring that small bit of humor.

“Nice to also know that I am still such a threat to HYDRA...”

_“Captain America! I am a big fan of your films,” Schimdt said as he gestured towards himself, stalking forward on the overhead catwalk._

_He could not breathe as he gripped the railings tightly. Zola was across on the other side, that mousy smug bastard. He almost missed Steve's reply as he brushed past him until he suddenly saw him lash out with a punch, snapping Schmidt's neck to the side – and impossibly, the man lashed back._

_The vibrating thonk of his fist on Steve's flimsy metal shield made the two of them stare at the imprint of a_ fist _to the point where Steve stumbled back and fell to the ground._

_“Steve!” the words were strangled from his throat as he saw Schmidt stalk forward-_

_Only to be kicked in the chest by Steve, falling to the ground before Zola grabbed a handle and the catwalk began to retract. He scrambled and reached over to grab Steve and to haul him back so that he wouldn't fall-_

_“You see,” Schmidt's face was a little off and became even more as the two of them stared, wide-eyed, shocked, at the sight of him_ ripping _his face off- Only to reveal a hideous red death-skull underneath- “I was Doktor Erskine's first and greatest creation!”_

_“You don't happen to have one of those, do you?” he swallowed nervously because this was just too bizarre, too crazy, he was dreaming-_

“If you rip off your face I'm sure HYDRA will reverse your threat level,” James said and saw the tiny wry smile on Steve's face grew a little larger. He felt the same bit of warmth, the same bit of pride he had felt twice before; once at JFK airport while watching Rogers talk down the Congressional field hearing panel from arresting Banner, the other time when he had almost fallen forty-one stories to the ground fighting the HYDRA capture team outside the courthouse.

And realized with a start that it had been _easier_.

It had been easier for him to push the pain away, to push the urge to eliminate his target, to eliminate Rogers, because... Because... It was easier because he had _fought it_. Rogers had pleaded with him, not for his life, because he _knew_ that Steve Rogers put the lives of others ahead of his own – the idiot had no ounce of self-preservation until he had whacked him in the head several times because of it – but Rogers had pleaded with him to fight it. To actively fight because he had been willing to _die_ if he could have a moment of peace-

And he had fought to stop that because Rogers, Steve, needed to understand that his own life was worth it, that to sacrifice himself for him because he had been so twisted. And so he had _fought_. And it was easier...it had been easier since he had walked into Avengers Tower.

_“Help me...”_ he had pleaded and he remembered one word that had been spoken as blackness had taken him that first time he had seen Rogers in over a year; the first time he had seen...his friend...his best friend, since the memories started to return.

“ _Always_.”

Steve Rogers always had James “Bucky” Barnes' back. And now...James realized that he was slowly having Steve Rogers' back.

* * *

The plan was hasty, but simplistic in nature. There was no time for elaboration, not with the intelligence they had from Clint, the knowledge that three of Coulson's agents were now prisoners if they had not been shot, nor the confirmation from Clint that the Chitauri sceptre was housed where Sam Wilson and Tony Stark were. Steve had ensured that Fury or Coulson were not planning any side missions, especially since the intelligence Clint had meticulously gathered revealed that it was a base, if not the main base, for all of HYDRA's Red Room experiments. He knew that Natasha wanted to destroy the place, to burn all of the paperwork, but he had insisted and made it a point that this was a rescue op only. That once Sam, Tony, Agents May, Ward, and Triplett were out of harm's way then they could theoretically go back and systematically destroy the place.

But there was a main point of contention for the whole plan and it had to do with Strucker's, or at least whomever was posing as Strucker, warning – that HYDRA was desperate and willing to do anything to get their weapon back. To get Bucky back into their hands. As a military tactician, Steve would have liked to have utilized Bucky first as a scout-sniper, before having him join in the assault, but as his friend and very mindful of what had been said, the plan had to be modified a little bit to keep Bucky as far away from the front lines as possible. The best he could do was utilize Bucky's skill set as support.

There had been talk that maybe once inside, they would be able to hopefully utilize Tony to help them fight their way out, but Clint's notes had indicated that both he and Sam had been near the sceptre's mind-altering influence since they had been brought there days ago. None of them knew what it was like to not be completely dominated by the sceptre if someone wielded it, but all of them knew what it was like to be near the sceptre after at least half-an-hour or so. Plus there was the disturbing mention in Clint's intelligence that HYDRA had been trying to _burn_ Tony out of his iron man armor and that Tony had somehow been successful in resisting, but did not know how long he could hold out.

When they reached the base, there was either the chance that Tony would be compromised by the sceptre or that his armor would be too damaged to be of use in a fight. Clint had mentioned that they had not touched Sam Wilson, which comforted Steve a little bit, but that he also had been hallucinating a lot about his former wingmate Reilly and was almost catatonic at times with medical supplies around him. Steve knew that the two were one of the mentally strongest men – both overcoming horrific pain, loss, and trauma to forge new paths of their own; so to read Clint's brief analysis of them since their capture was a little disconcerting to say the least. He wanted to deny the intelligence gathered, to say that even Clint himself was compromised by his proximity to the Chitauri sceptre, but also knew that Clint was one of the most methodical in intelligence gathering. In the few times he had worked with Hawkeye, it was Clint who had first seen what others could not see, from both afar and up close.

So that left Tony and Sam out of the equation of helping them out of the base. For the three others that had been captured, he could only hope that they had not been executed outright and that they were at least somewhat hale and healthy to help shoot their way out. Otherwise, he had a feeling that when they started their assault, Clint was going to have a tough time trying to free them without putting himself at great risk.

Steve had considered calling Bruce, sending a quinjet for him, but there was no time. They had to move now, before HYDRA had a chance to prepare. A Learjet from London to Zurich, the nearest major airport to where Bucky had fallen so many years ago, was about one hour and forty minutes of flight time. He estimated an hour or so extra of a drive deep into the mountains, which meant that were already four hours behind. It had taken them roughly five hours to get to Fury's place in Strasbourg, France and it would take them about three and half hours to get to where they needed to go in the Alps. By then, they would be seven, about eight hours behind. Plenty of time for HYDRA to prepare for their arrival unless they struck quickly.

Steve knew that Thor could be the advance vanguard, Mjolnir's flight speed having not been calculated, but speculated to be very fast. But he also knew that Thor could not handle _that_ many HYDRA troops; especially if there was the chance of Extremis or Centipede soldiers there. No, they had to hit it all at once, as a group, as the Avengers.

“Simple rescue op,” he leaned forward against the hardlight projection table Fury had in his hideout. He looked at everyone, meeting every single gaze including Fury's and Bucky's. “We get in, we get out. If there's a chance of destroying the base as a whole, we'll do it, but our main priority is Stark, Wilson, May, Triplett, and Ward, okay?”

Six pairs of eyes met his own as each acknowledged his orders in their own way. Steve took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right, let's do this.”

* * *

The wail of klaxons and alarms was sudden, but Clint barely acknowledged it as he pressed his fingers into the corners of his eyes a little tighter. He managed to steady his breath, but released it with a shuddering hiccup as he curled further onto the cold concrete floor of the supply closet he was in. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have thought that he was working with _free will_ when it was the fucking _stupid_ Chitauri sceptre? How could he have been so complacent, so blinded to what it was and that his own arrogance clouding his judgment. This was the same sceptre that Loki had controlled him with; had twisted his thoughts inside and out, had stripped him of who he had been, had unmade him and remolded him. Had _played_ with his brain and left him-

He cursed wordlessly as he opened his eyes and pounded a fist into the back of the cold wall, staring up with a whistling hiss of drawn breath. He had been played like a finely tuned instrument once again and it twisted the horror in him that Karpov had been right – so terribly right. He _had_ been able to resist, but the subtleties of what the sceptre was capable of...he had not been able to resist or see that. Karpov did not twist his mind forcibly like Loki had, but he had been, was probably still, twisting it nonetheless. Karpov was definitely not human, maybe even immortal in some shape or form, but definitely a lot more experienced in this sort of mind-twisting sick game than Loki. It was as if Loki's attempt with the sceptre was akin to Thor smashing everything in his way with Mjolnir. Karpov had made Loki's attempts three years ago look like child's play.

And truth be told, it frightened him. It dredged up the deepest childhood fears he had, of the circus and his younger days living on the streets, scraping for food, fighting tooth and nail. There were other things he hoped would not have happened during his childhood, but he did not want to think about it. He pounded a fist into the wall again as he ground his teeth together. The alarms continued to blare and he glared up at the ceiling. How could he have been so _stupid_?! So complacent? So...idiotic because he thought he was the best for this assignment and instead had allowed himself to fall into the enemy's hands once again. Had led his friends into an _ambush_ where they would surely be killed because it was _his fault once more_. All of his fault.

How many were going to die now because of him? How much blood was going to be on his ledger after this? How many-

_“Don't,” she warned him, a steely glint in her eyes, “don't do that to yourself Clint.”_ _He wanted to protest her warning, but quieted in light of her look. It was the look that said, 'I've been where you were' and one of the few things he had taught her, she had taught him – mutual sharing of knowledge was to move on. Regret was there, but there was nothing to do now than to live the lives of those they could not save. Those that had sacrificed themselves because of their mistakes, their successes._

He drew in another shuddering breath and let it out slowly, trying to compartmentalize the pain, the horror, everything he felt. It was true that Karpov might have manipulated everything at this point, but Clint slowly realized that even though he said he _allowed_ it just for a chance to get the Winter Soldier back – he _allowed_ it to happen. There was a certain type of arrogance, a familiar one that he recognized in Karpov; had even seen it before in one other person – Loki. He had no doubts that Karpov and Loki were not cut from the same cloth, but the fact that both wielded the Chitauri sceptre made him wonder if there was a certain manipulation of their own minds, to bring forth a supposed-omnipotence of arrogance that blinded them to certain aspects of their so-called 'grand' plans that they had. Though Karpov was far more subtler about it than Loki, there was still that similar feeling Clint had gotten from Loki during his time under his control.

And he realized, for all of Karpov's manipulations, he _was_ best suited for this job, this assignment. Fury had been right; not because of his previous experience with the sceptre, but exactly because of how he had reacted _after_ breaking free. The one thing that Loki had never expected was for Clint to use his knowledge gained while under Loki's mind control against him – and how he was able to shoot a supposedly regular broadhead at Loki's face during the middle of the Battle for New York, only to have it _explode_ and send him flying, disoriented, into Stark's penthouse where the Hulk dealt with him. Loki had been expecting him to retaliate, and Clint had obliged, but he had used Loki's assumption against him by adding his own flare, something _Loki_ should have realized, but had been too blind by his arrogance to see it.

Clint blinked as his realization settled into his bones, into his mind. Yes, he might have been badly manipulated again, but he also knew that he had been left to his own devices. Karpov probably knew that he was huddled somewhere in the corner, blaming himself, would probably come to his senses now that the alarms were blaring what was probably the Avengers attacking the base; but he also knew that Clint would eventually be doing _something_ , because Karpov thought he had _read_ Clint correctly. And he would have, Clint acknowledged as he slowly stood up, grabbing his bow and flicking through the arrowheads, selecting the ones he needed in the order that he needed them in.

Karpov probably would have foreseen Clint making his way out of whatever funk he had fallen in and go free his friends – which is probably one of the reasons why he had shot May and Triplett, to delay him – and it was something that he readied himself for. But if there was one thing Karpov would not have seen was the fact that Clint _knew_. And like the explosive arrow he had shot at Loki, an ordinary broadhead, it would explode in Karpov's face when he realized he had badly underestimated the _anger_ and how far he would use that anger to get back at the old man. Because if there was one thing that neither Loki nor Karpov had ever learned was that Clint Barton was a _survivor_.

* * *

His name for the last one-hundred forty years or so was Vasily Karpov. Before that it was Aleksander Lukin one of the special advisers to the Czar; and before that, Benjamin Tallmadge, the leader of the Culper spy network in the American Revolution; and so many others, some historical figures, others, mere peasantry, nobility, and everything in between. He had been so many people for so long that one would have thought he had forgotten his true name. But he never forgot; not with so much on this realm to remind him of what could have been his, not with his meticulous care of historical events, a twist of fate this way, a twist of fate that way. Not with the planning he had cultivated, the ebb and flow of political gains, of warfare, of risen leaders and fallen ones. Sometimes things were out of his control, but sometimes, things were orchestrated by him.

And finally, after so long of a wait, so long of gathering his own remnant power, shared grudgingly with his loyal follower who wore the face of Baron von Strucker with the spoonful of power he had given him, his weapon was finally returning to him. It would be the first step of his war against the realms. A significant step, but one he would not have taken if he was not sure of what he had to do, what he needed to do. It was _promised_ to him – eons ago. It was promised to him and he would take it – it was his right after all.

He was disappointed that his follower had not returned after his mission was completed, but he supposed that it was the first time in a very long time that he had allowed him off of his leash. He suppose he could tug the mental thread that linked them together, a shared bond that had been cultivated since their exile, a contract of sorts, to find out where that red-headed nuisance had went, but he let that thread be. Slepnir would return as any familiar was wont to do, aided by the _contract_ he had made with him before their forcible exile. He supposed he could not blame him for the absolute giddy rush he must have felt unleashing the spoonful of power he had been given. And there was merit to it – it allowed him to be hidden from the all-seeing eyes in the stars above. That eye would track Slepnir instead of himself and he was content with it. He wondered if Slepnir was still wearing Baron von Strucker's face, but suppose he would have discarded it as soon as humanly possible.

He watched the screens with an absent gaze, at the sight of his gunners shooting at Thor who was not quite attacking just yet, but was causing a significant amount of distraction and damage to the surrounding woodland and mountainous area. “Have the guards been posted at the secondary and tertiary entrances?” he asked as he saw a couple of the guns stop shooting, taken out by sniper fire, most likely by the Winter Soldier hidden somewhere in the tree line.

“Yes sir,” Rumlow answered, standing next to him with his arms crossed, “they've also been given the alternate dosage to prevent regulation.”

“Good,” he smiled inwardly at the sight of his weapon just outside the base. It would soon be his...

“Sir,” Rumlow suddenly spoke up again, “I'm not too comfortable with the fact that some of them have been given dosages to prevent regulation-”

“Sacrifices are needed to ensure that the Avengers do not find it so easy to penetrate the bunker, would you not say?” he glanced over at the scarred man who wore a skull-like balaclava to hide his scars. Rumlow's mouth moved with an acknowledging grimace before out of the corner of his eye, he saw something that made him quirk up a corner of his lip in a smile. “Ah...our lost bird finally moves.”

“Barton?” Rumlow asked and Karpov nodded.

“Yes,” he gestured to one of the security cameras that showed Barton clearly stalking down the hallway, shooting the armed guards there dead with each arrow that he then pulled out of their bodies and stuck back into his pack for re-purposing. There was an angry set to his pace and it was all that Karpov could do to not relish seeing the misguided righteous anger in it. Barton was such a fool and he had _enjoyed_ breaking him, showing him all of his foibles and follies. The fact that he had pulled himself together was all the more sweeter and it would be so easy to shatter such righteousness again. He tightened his grip on the handle of the Chitauri sceptre, feeling its power flowing like a soothing trickle into his mind, granting him knowledge and an assurance that this was the right course, that all of his years of planning would soon come to fruition.

“He's going to free the others-”

“Yes,” Karpov interrupted before blinking once and looking at Rumlow, “if you would be so kind as to dispose of him.”

“Kill him? Not keep him hostage-”

“He has served his purpose. I do not need a weakling like him under my control anymore,” he shrugged before turning back to the monitors, the guns that had been taken out firing again as new gunners took the place of those who had been shot.

He heard the grunt of acknowledgment from Rumlow before he left, the door closing shut behind him. Karpov only sighed once before absently running his free hand over the silvery blade of the sceptre. It was nearly time.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Never piss off Clint Barton – he will shoot you full of arrows, pluck them out, and shoot you again just for good measure. Also, it's about time that Avengers went on the offensive, wouldn't you say?

In other notes, more mental casting for related characters in the _Trickster Universe_ : Vasily Karpov – I imagine him looking a little like his comics incarnation from the _Winter Soldier_ arc in the Captain America comics, and Jeremy Irons.


	27. Chapter 27

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 27_

 

Ideally, one shot arrows from a distance, not in a narrow corridor where there was little room for error and even less for supposedly the full draw weight of a bow, but that did not deter Clint from pinning and killing several HYDRA soldiers. To him, it was like a turkey shoot, the narrow corridors creating a bottleneck to which he easily dispatched the soldiers he encountered. Some he surprised, others tried to react, but a deft dodge, quick draw of his bow string and they were dead, pinning to the wall, ground, or even to each other depending on where he shot his arrows.

He salvaged the arrows and occasionally heads he was able to pluck out of the dead soldiers. Sometimes it was just the shaft itself because the broadhead was lodged deep into bone and tissue, sometimes it was the whole thing because it had penetrated organ, missing bone and muscle – for the most part, it was nothing because of his kill shots.

He moved with deliberate efficiency, noting the minimal resistance he encountered on his way to the cells where everyone was held. The fact that Karpov had not even told the guards that he was a traitor or even a spy within their ranks was disconcerting, but at least it made him wary enough that he knew it was a little too easy to take down the HYDRA personnel he encountered and that somewhere in all of this was a trap for him. There was no way that Karpov would allow him to waltz in, free Tony and the others, and waltz out to meet the rest of the Avengers fighting their way inside.

He arrived at the door in short order, killing the two soldiers on duty before taking one of their palms and running it through the scanner along with the person's ID. The door hissed open and Clint looked both left and right, up and down the corridor, the alarms still wailing, bathing the halls in flashing lights, before stepping in. However, before he closed the door, he stabbed both the outside and inside panel with one of his arrows, wriggling it several times and then closed the door behind him.

“Barton...” Tony's voice was faint, but laced with a slightly relieved wry amusement as he hung limply from his chains. He looked behind Tony to see Grant Ward staring at him with a calculating look, but made no move from where he sat on the lone bench in Tony's cell.

A quick glance over to Sam Wilson's cell told him that the former pararescue looked exhausted, but more awake. Both Agents May and Triplett's wounds were clearly expertly bandaged in the short time he had been gone, and both agents were staring at him with the same evaluating look Ward had on his face. The two injured agents were sitting up, but leaning heavily against the walls of the cell, faces ashen with blood loss and the shock of trauma. It was evident that they needed more medical attention than what Wilson had patched them up with, but for the moment, they seemed to be able to react. Clearly May, Triplett, and Ward were hesitant to trust him after everything, but it seemed that Tony must have told Wilson a few stories about him, because Wilson looked ready for anything.

Clint wasted no time as he flicked through his selection of arrowheads and picked two, drawing one out and stabbing it into the simplified lock on Tony and Ward's cell before stabbing the other one into Wilson's cell. Both locks started to hiss with arrowheads in them, the very powerful metallic-eating acid working its way through the deadbolt. The locks on the cells could have easily been picked, equivalent of jail cells made in the nineteen forties, but Karpov had counted on the Chitauri sceptre to sap any and all strength and will for either Tony or Wilson to pick.

“I've got adrenaline-” Wilson started, but he interrupted him with a shake of his head.

“Save it until these are open-”

Clint only had a split second of warning, the whisper of something behind him before he turned and dodged to the side as a fist impacted the bars where he had been standing in front of. They bent the metal with a screeching sound as Clint dropped his bow and drew out his handgun and fired at Brock Rumlow's grinning face. He heard the others scrambling to their feet behind him as he saw his bullets impact Rumlow, scoring direct hits-

“He's Extremis-” May's shout came a hairsbreath too late as Clint saw the bullets he had fired at Rumlow _glow_ red-orange in his skin and heal over. The red-orange tint turned his grin into a horrific version of a flaming skull-like lattice of puckered skin before he suddenly _moved_.

It was as if someone had jammed a red-hot poker into his ribs at the same time slammed a concrete ball-bearing into them, and Clint gasped as he felt a few break underneath the strain. He reacted without thinking, kicking and clawing, squirming his way out of the pain, shying away as Rumlow danced back away from his legs. He struck downward with his elbows as he was tossed into the bars again, firing once, scoring a hit that instantly healed before he barely dodged to the side from another punch, this time breaking the bars and ripping half of the door to Tony's cell off of its hinge, the acid dissolved locks unable to take the strain.

Rumlow suddenly grabbed at his gun arm and ripped the handgun away; Clint releasing his fingers from its grip at the last minute, but still grimaced inwardly at the bruising and sprains he received, his skin burning in contact with Rumlow's. He twisted out of the Extremis-enhanced agent's grip and instead, reached behind him to grab two broadheads, holding them at the apex point in his hands as he saw the gun skitter away. Hand-to-hand combat was not quite his forte, that belonged to Natasha, but Clint was a decent enough brawler, at least enough that he could last maybe a couple of minutes against Natasha before unceremoniously beaten by her – if she wasn't in a playing mood.

“Karpov says you did well, but he's gotta let you go,” Rumlow grinned around his puckered scar-lined face. The balaclava he had been wearing a few hours earlier was no where in sight, but Clint supposed that it's painted death-head was more akin to intimidation than anything else.

“I thought I didn't qualify for early retirement,” he quipped lightly, his breath hitching around the fractured, bruised, and probably broken ribs, as Rumlow charged at him again. It took all of Clint's training and then some to dodge the very fast punch. The only saving grace was that Rumlow's skin glowed from Extremis and helped visualize where the punch was coming from at the very last second. The metal bars behind Clint screeched in protest, the acid melting on the lock helping it bend in half, but it had not dissolved through enough for it to completely open from the force of Rumlow's punch.

He reached out with one of his arrowheads and stabbed it into Rumlow's neck before stabbing the other deep into the top of Rumlow's shoulder, making the man hiss in pain before stepping back to assess his injuries. Blood dripped from where Clint managed to score part of his jugular, but just as quickly, he saw Rumlow take the arrowhead out and the wound began to heal, the blood looking sickly red-orange against the power of the Extremis running through his veins and skin.

The hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood up, before the very familiar sound of a gun being cocked made him flick a quick look back, Rumlow also stopping for a second, but with a smile on his face.

“Choosing a side, Agent Ward?” Clint did not need to know that his senses told him Ward was pointing the gun at his head behind him. He supposed that in the flurry of his brief fight with Rumlow, his gun had skittered towards the now half-opened cell where Tony still hung in his chains and Ward had taken the opportunity to acquire a weapon.

“Big mistake, kid,” he breathed out softly, ignoring the hitch of pain with each breath as he saw Rumlow shake his head, the broadheads that had once been in his face and jugular now glowing as he transferred the Extremis heat-source into them.

He could get to Ward, he knew that, but getting to him versus fending off Rumlow at the same time who could move _faster_ ... He did not know what the story was regarding Ward, HYDRA, and all of the bullshit happening, but he knew that Karpov had discarded him as a potential agent, which meant _he_ had a chance to try to convince Ward to work with him instead of shooting him in the head. A quick look at May, Wilson, and Triplett showed stony faces, though Wilson looked like he wanted to jump Ward, even though bars separated the cells.

“We appreciate your dedication to HYDRA Agent Ward, but-”

“Not for you,” Ward suddenly fired, rocking Rumlow's head back. Clint had barely held himself still to _not_ flinched as he _felt_ the bullet pass close to the side of his head-

“Barton catch!”

He automatically reached out behind him as Stark shouted through the rattle of chains breaking, and caught a small object with a clear spray nozzle attached to it. Without a second thought, as Rumlow's rolled his head to the side, the bullet lodged deep into his skull in one milky-white eye, lunged forward. He heard movement behind him, the sound of someone else moving, but sprayed whatever was in the small canister in Stark had thrown at him into Rumlow's face.

The reaction was immediate as Rumlow screamed, clawing at his face as he dropped his super-heated arrowheads and Clint dodged to the side, blocking a hastily thrown punch before the burly man collapsed to the ground, ripping skin and tracking blood down his face. He watched in slight morbid fascination as the Extremis glow suddenly looked _blue_ and _purple_ , veins that once glowed red-orange suddenly turning into a pale colors as his skin seemingly cooled- Clint shook himself out of his minor reverie by suddenly kicking Rumlow in the head knocking him out. Blood gushed from the half-healed head wound and Clint knew that without a doubt, if Rumlow was still alive – based on the shallow breath he took – he would never be able to see out of the eye that Ward had shot out. Whatever Tony had given him to spray into Rumlow's face had stopped the Extremis' healing abilities before it could fully heal the bullet wound.

“...The hell...?” Wilson breathed out into the near silence, punctuated by the alarms still blaring outside the room.

“...Was my last...resort,” Clint turned to see Tony hanging from the chains now with one arm still attached, his other one gloveless with something dark and metallic slowly disappearing _underneath_ his skin. He still sounded breathless and in pain, “Sort of... It...neutralizes Extremis, or at least my version of Extremis, including the one in Pepper. I...didn't know if it would work with the big dude there...until now.”

“Thanks...” Clint replied cautiously as he glanced beyond Tony to see that Ward was gone. He was not surprised, surmising that the rogue agent more than likely slipped out during the chaotic moment neutralizing Rumlow.

“Dude, you _have_ Extremis-” Wilson started faintly, but was interrupted by Tony.

“Activate Extremis,” Tony held up his unarmored hand and Clint recoiled a little to see the dark _metal_ suddenly cover his hand before he reached up and touched the chain holding his other arm up and it glowed briefly before the heat weakened the link enough for him to fall completely to the ground. “Deactivate Extremis...”

“It's what kept you from being burned out all this time...” May murmured quietly as the dark liquid-like _metal_ disappeared underneath Tony's skin again and Clint could imagine a grimace underneath the blank face plate of the iron man armor.

“...Pep...doesn't know,” Tony looked away and Clint could imagine Pepper Potts not taking that particular news well, but decided that it was something Tony would have to deal with. He nodded as he stepped forward and grabbed the bars that were bent in the other cell and ripped it off completely, the acidic arrowhead dissolving it enough for him to break it. It also got the others into action as Wilson reached into his medical bag and stabbed both Triplett and May with epipens of adrenaline after both nodded their consent.

The pararescue then shouldered his medical bag and stepped out of the cell, quickly moving over to Rumlow and stripping him of his weapons, giving one to May and keeping another for himself. Clint reached down to his secondary holster and pulled out his remaining handgun and gave it to Triplett, who took it with slightly shaking hands but shook his head, saying that he was fine to go.

“Adrenaline,” the young agent shrugged, “I don't exactly react well to it, but it's not the time to complain-”

“Wait-”

“I'm not allergic, just my body doesn't quite like it most times,” Triplett reassured Wilson who looked concerned.

“Rear guard then,” Clint pointed to Triplett who nodded, happy to take the rear guard and not be a liability if he was on point. “Tony-”

“I can move,” Tony said flatly as he reached up to free his damaged gauntlet from the chains and put it on, the plates not quite clicking together, “suit's pretty banged up though, I can fire my repulsors, but that's about it. They've burned a lot of the circuitry and wiring, smells like melted plastic in here.”

“All right, watch the rear with Triplett. May, Wilson-”

“Good to go sir,” Clint saw the cold professionalism settle into May and shot her a crooked smile as she checked her gun and reached down, none-too-gently kicking Rumlow in the ribs as she stripped him of several mags. He had worked with the agent codenamed: The Cavalry, more than once, but that had been years ago, before he had met Natasha in Sao Paulo.

Reaching down, he picked up his discarded bow, “Ward-”

“Forget about him. He's a traitor and I'm more liable to shoot him than to figure out where his loyalties really lie,” May interrupted him tightly and Clint nodded. There was the possibility that by not hunting down the whereabouts of Grant Ward would leave them vulnerable to getting shot at from behind, but at the same time, time was of the essence. The Avengers were attacking and Clint knew that this was their only opportunity to get out of here.

“Hanger bay is this way,” he pulled the door open, the damaged panels he had stabbed his arrows through earlier, enabling him to open it with ease instead of trying to find a way to palm it open.

He looked up, pausing for a second as the quiet distant sound of gunfire rose above the blaring of the alarms and knew that the Avengers had more than likely made it in, if not was already pushing Karpov's defenses to the maximum. A dark smile curled the edges of his lips as he drew out an arrow and notched it, leading his friends through the body-filled hallway towards the hanger bay.

He knew he had to hurry, mostly for May and Triplett's benefit than for anything else. Adrenaline was an unpredictable factor in all of this; the shock and pain of wounds unique to Triplett and May. The only thing he could prepare for was more than likely Triplett collapsing first because of his own body's adverse reaction to the adrenaline, and so had Tony not only in the rear guard for protection, but also in case he needed to carry Triplett after the adrenaline wore off. Wilson was between the two wounded agents both to keep an eye on them, but also because Clint knew that as a pararescue, Wilson had been trained to move and shoot with someone in his arms and so if either him or Tony ran into problems on their way to the hanger bay, Wilson would be the fallback option.

As much as he wanted to get Karpov back for what he had done to him, his friends were his first priority. He could only take consolation in the fact that there was always the option of shooting Karpov from afar with an exploding arrow that he would never see coming, just like Loki.

* * *

The air ducts were spacious enough with plenty of room to crawl through, but Natasha made sure that each of her steps was quiet and calculated. She could hear the rumble of footsteps below her in the halls as HYDRA soldiers ran this way and that to the incoming attacks that Coulson, Thor, Steve, and James were pouring on. The plan had been for James to provide covering fire for Thor who was attacking head on, drawing a lot of the soldiers towards him while wrecking general havoc with Mjolnir. Coulson and Steve were attacking a secondary entrance to draw off even more soldiers, making HYDRA think that they were the actual team sent in to rescue their friends. But it was Natasha and Skye who were the infiltration and ex-filtration team.

The muffled blare of the alarms reverberated through the ducts, giving her an extra cover of noise, but she still made sure she was careful in her steps. Her shoes had rubberized points along with the rubber padding strapped to her knees and elbows, her gloves fingerless and free to ensure at least a tactile feeling as she crawled along the vents. Skye was actively monitoring any cameras or thermal equipment they would encounter in the vents and neutralizing them without giving their position away. The wireless hot spot she carried on herself would potentially mark their position, but Natasha was counting on the fact that hopefully almost everyone was too busy with the attack outside to concern themselves with what was going on, on the inside. However, she was still cautious enough to make sure that they did not run into too much trouble.

“Left,” Skye's voice whispered in her earpiece and Natasha smiled a little, having not even heard her voice in the duct itself. She certainly heard Skye's movement behind her as she followed, but the fact that she did not hear the girl's voice itself meant that she at least was utilizing the training she had from May and Coulson for the past year.

“Four-hundred feet to your right after that,” Skye said again as Natasha crawled to her left and saw the latch to the room that they were supposed to exit in. She approached it, casting her senses out cautiously and noted no movement save the blinking of computer lights in the room itself. The rumble across the vents told her that another group of soldiers passed by the hallway that they were directly above and she turned back a little.

“Stay,” she said quietly and held up her hand with a closed fist to emphasize her command to Skye who nodded, one hand flat against the duct to brace herself, the other holding onto a tablet she had been using to direct them through the vents.

Natasha quickly unscrewed the bolts holding the vent in place and pulled it towards herself before putting it to the side and peering out. There was no one in place except for at least two security cameras which she saw had been turned off.

“Probably five minutes if no one's really paying attention,” Skye commented softly behind her.

She nodded once as she flipped out of the vent and landed in a crouch, her body completely hidden from the door's windows to which she had landed directly in front of. She paused for a moment as the sounds of soldiers running by reverberated the floor and their shadows passed overhead. Natasha swept the room once and stood up, gesturing once for Skye to come out of cover. “Clear,” she said before she tapped her ear, the sounds of the radio chatter returning to full volume in her ear.

“Sir, we're in, beginning upload now,” she said over the comm chatter of Coulson and the others, mostly pointing out soldiers. There was the occasional sniper rifle report, but even that was muted, James having turned down his microphone to not make them all deaf in the middle of the fight outside. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Skye hurry over to one of the computer terminals in the room and start to type rapidly with one hand, her other hand tapping her tablet's screen.

“Got the link, rerouting it,” Fury's calm voice came back, “any sign of Barton or the others?”

“Negative,” Natasha kept her body flushed against the wall next to the door, using her limited vision out of the door's window to make sure no one who was an enemy force was approaching. She drew out her handguns as she waited for Skye to finish what she needed to do.

“Colonel Rhodes reports successful uplink; we have control of the Insight satellites,” Fury reported and Natasha felt the corner of her lips quirk up in a small smile. Before they had left for the Alps, it had been Coulson who had suggested a side mission in addition to rescuing Tony, Sam, and the others. Steve had predictably protested, a little angry at the secrecy until Coulson had explained that while Project Insight had been disabled, there was still the satellites around the Earth that HYDRA technically still controlled and thus could easily rebuild the Helicarriers if they chose and upload Zola's algorithm once more to wipe out their enemies if given the time. He suggested that maybe considering the base was potentially where the Winter Soldier came from had the ability to up-link to the satellite, they would be able to wrest control away from HYDRA and keep it in SHIELD's hands, if not someone they could trust that was not SHIELD.

Steve had reluctantly agreed, but cautioned that it was not at the expense of the rescue mission and everyone had agreed. He had also suggested that it would be Colonel James Rhodes to be the keeper if it was proven that the satellite uplink was indeed in the base. Natasha had no doubts that Fury wanted to keep the link open himself, but she had gone over the program with Skye to make sure that Fury kept his word and did not make a backdoor into Skye' program. It was better that neither SHIELD nor HYDRA had access to the Insight satellites. They also knew that Rhodes would never give such access to the United States military, even though he reported to them; it was like how he guarded the War Machine/Iron Patriot suit from Air Force scientists too.

“Security cameras...wait, cells are empty...broken, Agent Romanov?” Natasha glanced over to see Skye's brow wrinkling in concern and moved from her position to peer over the young hacker's shoulder.

She smiled at the sight of bent and broken metal bars in what had been identified in Clint's intelligence packet as where Tony and Sam had been staying. There was a body to the side, but the footage was too grainy for her to identify who it was, though it looked a little like Brock Rumlow's height, hair color, and build. “Acid,” she said simply and gestured for Skye to look at other security camera footage, “they're on the move.”

“Got it,” Skye quickly typed in a few lines of code and a quick facial recognition program appeared, searching for Clint Barton's face before it stopped at two security cameras.

It looked like Clint was leading the way, but Natasha frowned as she stared at him. He was hunched over a little, as if holding in some kind of pain and knew immediately that her long-time partner was wounded. Her eyes flicked over to where he was and saw at least a group of soldiers on an intercept course, even though it was clear that neither group knew the other was coming. “Found Barton, moving to intercept,” she tapped her ear in a general all-call to the rest of the group. She muted her comm. and glanced at Skye who nodded in silent affirmation that she had finished what she needed to do.

“Virus upload complete,” she said before unplugging her tablet from the workstation she was at and drew out one of her handguns. Natasha nodded once before moving to open the door-

And suddenly staggered as she felt a gigantic rumble shake the base itself. The lights flickered and small bits of plaster fell from the ceiling as she glanced around. For a split second, the alarms stopped blaring, leaving a deathly silence before a new alarm blared, this time making the lights turn yellow-orange. “Skye?”

Skye glanced at her tablet and flicked a few fingers this way and that before she looked at her, eyes wide, “Part of the hanger bay and side entrance where Cap and AC were fighting collapsed...”

Natasha immediately tapped her ear, “Cap? Cap? Steve? Couslon? Agent Coulson? Phil?”

Static was her only reply as she heard Fury echo her call over the line before she tightened her grip on her guns. She knew that Coulson and Steve were opposite of where Clint and the others were, even though Clint was heading towards the hanger bay, but she also knew that there was no way she was sending Skye alone to intercept either party while she dealt with the others.

“ _I'll find them_ ,” James' quiet voice came over the comm. in Russian and Natasha blinked.

“ _Yasha, they want you-_ ”

“ _I'll find them_ ,” he repeated quietly and Natasha grimaced, falling silent. They all knew the risk of having James move from his role as support to front line – the warning that HYDRA wanted their weapon back, but at the same time she knew that James, Yasha, whomever he was, was stubborn enough that he _would_ find Steve and Coulson at great risk to himself. He was already showing that he had memories of who he used to be and was slowly reconciling who James Buchanan Barnes was in relation to the Winter Soldier, but at the same time, Natasha _remembered_ how stubborn Yasha was. Perhaps it was one of the very few common traits both the Winter Soldier and James Barnes shared.

And she knew she had no right to tell him otherwise – not without sounding like a hypocrite to the mercy she had been shown for so many years. Not with that much red in her ledger.

“Let's go,” she gestured for Skye to follow her once more as made her decision. Her saving grace was that once she dealt with the HYDRA soldiers on intercept to Clint, and met up with her partner, maybe they could find a working quinjet or something flyable in the hanger bay that had not collapsed and get James out of the front lines as soon as possible – before HYDRA had a chance to reclaim their prized soldier once more.

That was as much as she could give to Yasha, to James. A fighting chance for survival.

* * *

It was slowly coming together. Like a maestro conducting the greatest concerto in his life, he could see the tiny sections, pieces, crescendos and diminuendos slowly weaving together his master plan. The playing of a finely tuned instrument responding to his call, to the bait he lovingly held out. He watched the Winter Soldier move from his position in his sniper's perch where no one could get to him, not even his counter snipers deployed to the front of the base, all of them intercepted by the so-called Thunder God Thor.

He watched the agent code named Black Widow, the finest product he had created in the female species of these insignificant ants, work in concerto with the Winter Soldier – sentimentality driving her. It was laughable and predictable, but it was something he had been counting on. The Black Widows prided themselves on their abilities to seduce, gather information, and kill without a second thought or emotional attachment, but what they never realized was that they were only the one thing that made them fallible – human. And she had responded as her species and kind was wont to do – be very human. A significant part of that was more than likely due to her exposure to the supposed 'good' side she was working on, but it had been an interesting...experiment to say the least. She was clearly moving towards where Barton and his group were headed to instead of towards the collapsed part of the hanger bay.

He closed his eyes and briefly sent a command across the light bond he had with the real Baron von Strucker. It was time to cast aside all unnecessary bonds. His last command for the good Baron was to evacuate, to take what remained of those who were of use to HYDRA, including the twins, into hiding before he forcibly broke the bond with a mental _snap_. He snapped the faint bond he had with Agent Barton, a bit disappointed that Rumlow had proven to be incompetent to not even kill the Agent. Continuing with the purging of all other bonds he had using the sceptre, he broke everything until he held just one little thread; one built so long ago. This one he could not snap, not after everything. He knew he could tug on the skeins he had with Slepnir, to summon him back, but he let it lie. Let him think he had his freedom for now...

He fingered the grip he had on the Chitauri sceptre, feeling the brief cool rush of power from its focal point, a blue stone-like gem that was unlike the fabled Tesseract. He could feel an echoing response from within, a siren's call the others like it. SHIELD and all others who had come in contact with the sceptre had mistakenly called it a Tesseract-based weapon, but it was not exactly a mistake. The two were virtually different from one another, but compatible in other ways. It echoed and called to its brethren, gems made with similar purposes like it eons ago. It's real name had been lost to the ages, but for now, the Chitauri sceptre was an adequate name for it.

The die had been cast, the concerto started, and there was no going back. It was time after so many years of careful planning. He was ready to finally discard the final persona he had worn for the last one-hundred and forty years. Vasily Karpov was about to be another identity discarded, but instead of picking up another mere mortal name, he was ready to embrace his true name once more.

“Heimdall, I hope you're watching,” he looked up at the ceiling of the base as a rumble shook it, shaking plaster and bits of concrete down around him. His weapon was finally alone, unaware, and he was going to reclaim it.

Who better than to wield the Hammer of the Gods, Mjolnir.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Sometimes I have to push myself to actively _finish_ a story even though I've already plotted it out in outline format. It's a nasty habit I have sometimes – just I see the end of the story and I get a bit lazy and not write. I can say for sure that there are at least two more chapters after this, if not three for the epilogue. And I hope to finish this by early November – which is great because I _really_ want to start writing the concluding story to the _Trickster Universe_ which leaps off of this one.

 


	28. Chapter 28

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 28_

 

It was a pretty bedraggled group he was leading to the hanger bay, but Clint had been in worst situations. One of the good things was that the group as a whole was mobile instead of having to carry the injured. But the mobility was not going to last long and so Clint cleared the halls as best as he could. His arrow supply was limited, but May and Wilson did their share of helping him shoot the patrols and guards they came across as did Tony. Triplett helped, but he was a little shakier and instead, finished off those that had been injured as they swept past.

There had been an unsettling rumble minutes earlier, shaking the halls so badly that everyone had hugged them as best as they could. Clint had briefly wondered if the base was going to collapse before the shaking stopped, leaving clouds of dust and debris kicked up everywhere. It had slowed them down a little, reducing visibility as Clint stretched his senses, using his ears to pick out if any soldiers were coming towards them or not.

He suddenly paused and held up a closed fist, everyone halting behind them as he heard the sounds of many boots coming towards them. He cursed silently and glanced up and down the narrow corridor they were in-

Just as the faint buzzing sound followed by several strangled noises came from where the booted feet were marching down the hall and Clint frowned. He drew out an arrow, notching it and ran around the corner in time to see Natasha lash out with a cartwheeling kick, knocking the weapon out of a black-clad soldier's hands. Clint fired, his arrow finding another soldier in the eye before two turned towards him and he ducked behind the corner as he heard bullets pinging off of the wall. He flicked through his arrowheads and drew out another one before firing it down the corridor.

“Nat!” he called out and she ducked as the arrowhead released its contents, a fine electrical spray net to which she reached out with a fist and charged it with one of her Widow's Bite gauntlets. The net electrocuted at least several of the guards as they twitched and fell to the feet before he fired several more arrows as someone else also fired their gun and the rest of the patrol fell to the ground.

“Barton!” Clint turned back to see Tony and the others hurrying towards him as he glanced back to where Natasha was brushing herself off, kicking a soldier absently in the head to knock him fully unconscious as another woman peered out from a different corner, gun held at the ready. Clint realized that the girl had shot at the remaining guards and a quick look at the bodies that he had skewered with his arrows told him that she had hit most of her marks.

“Skye!” the girl's face broke out into a broad smile as Triplett called out from behind and Clint glanced back to see both May and Triplett with small smiles on their faces. He also noted that both were starting to look a little more ashen than before. The adrenaline was definitely wearing off.

“Stark, Wilson,” Natasha greeted as Clint felt her presence slid up next to him before her small hand pressed against his bicep in a silent affectionate greeting. He flicked a look at her and nodded minutely in return before pressing two fingers over her own. Red Room signal for _I am well_.

“Man, you are a sight for sore eyes,” Wilson grinned tiredly as Tony flicked his faceplate up.

“Ms. Rushman,” he said and Clint caught Natasha rolling her eyes a little at his blithe remark. Tony occasionally liked to call Natasha by the name she had used while undercover at Stark Industries and it was a testament to how worried she was that she did not retaliate in any way as was her custom each time. “And seriously, Bird Boy, if she's the best thing you've seen, you need to-”

“Yes sir, I've got them,” Clint tuned out whatever else Tony was saying to Sam to see Natasha also ignoring them as she touched her ear before turning to him, “Frequency seven-dash-oh-point-two.”

“Thanks,” Clint tapped his own ear, adjusting the frequency until he smiled faintly at the sound of Fury's voice finishing giving Natasha her commands.

“Sir,” he greeted, “good to hear you're not dead.”

“Likewise Agent-”

“-thing is really over done though you do- -Garrett; he was j-,” Coulson's voice suddenly cut in and out of the radio and Clint frowned and noted out of the corner of his eye, Stark also frowning, holding up an armored hand to shut Wilson as he was listening in with his limited systems in the iron man armor.

Coulson sounded exhausted and in pain, which meant he was injured in some way. There was no way that Coulson would ever show such weakness to whomever he was talking to, even in front of his friends unless he was really injured and delirious from pain. Clint had only seen Coulson show such weakness only a handful of times and it was really because his friend trusted him that much to know that he was in good hands, safe hands.

“Cap?” Natasha hailed on the radio, but silence answered her.

“ _Arriving at site_ ,” the burst of Russian made Clint blink a little as Natasha frowned.

“ _Yasha-_ James, wait for reinforcements-”

“ _Too late_ ,” was the curt reply followed by a meaty grunt then an audible click of someone disconnecting from the comm. line and Natasha swore in Russian as she glared at nothing in particular.

“Agent Romanov-”

“I know sir,” Natasha growled over the line to Fury's warning before glancing at all of them, “hanger bay's this way. We can try to find a quinjet or something, but we need to move now. Steve and Coulson fell into it, so half of it's collapsed-”

“How?!”

“Extremis soldiers, has to be,” Natasha replied to Tony's inquiry before his faceplate clicked back down.

“Let's go,” Tony nodded once before brushing past them, the others following at a more hurried pace. Clint glance behind them to make sure there was no one else coming out of the dusty hallway before notching an arrow and following them. He caught up with Natasha as she took the mid-guard, the girl, Skye taking rear guard and watching Triplett carefully along with Sam Wilson.

“You know him, the Winter Soldier?” Clint asked as Natasha nodded.

“You should too,” she said before looking at him with a serious look, “he's the Yasha that trained me all those years ago, as well as being Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the Howling Commandos.”

It was as if all of the pieces of a very large puzzle clicked together for Clint. Shock coursed through him at the identity of the legendary ghost, the Winter Soldier, but it was secondary compared to what he knew about Karpov, what he wanted, and what he had _felt_ from him – and especially what Karpov was _armed_ with.

“Karpov's after the Winter Soldier,” Clint said and Natasha nodded, her simple look telling him that they had suspected as much, but he shook his head, “he's going to go after Cap to get to the Winter Soldier.” And in the pit of his stomach, as he saw her eyes widen before they hurried their pace to the hanger bay, he could feel the churning dread – there was nothing worst than to lose yourself to the sceptre; something he never wanted anyone else to go through.

* * *

One minute he and Coulson were holding their own against the waves of regular HYDRA soldiers, a few Extremis-enhanced soldiers, and Centipede reinforcements, the next the ground was literally exploding underneath them. Steve's first instinct was to not leap and roll and find some kind of purchase to ride out the sudden drop, but rather he dove towards Coulson. He managed to grab the agent by the arm and curl his shield around him as they fell, landing rather heavily onto the ground. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and Steve suddenly pushed Coulson away as a ton of debris fell around them, throwing his shield at the same time to stop most of it from hitting the other man on the head as Coulson ducked and rolled away.

Steve grunted in pain as more fell on him as he half crawled, half ran, tripping when one clipped him hard on the shoulder and another fell on the back of his knee, sending him crashing to the rocky, debris covered floor. He instinctively curled in on himself, covering his head as he was pelted by falling debris, personnel and generally anything and everything that had been taken out by the explosion. The smell of burnt concrete, fumes, and burning bodies told him that it had to be an Extremis soldier who had exploded, probably deliberately. He grunted again as several more rocks clipped him, some cutting into him, drawing blood as the falling debris slowly lessened and Steve peered out from under his arms.

He coughed once, breathing in the dusty air and twisted a bit, grimacing as he saw that he was trapped from roughly the waist down. He wiggled his toes inside his boots and felt a sharp spike of pain – definitely some kind of injury down around his lower hip and legs, but his spine was still intact and he was able to somewhat move. Steve coughed again as he waved his hand around to try to clear the dusty air. He glanced up to see the wide open hole where trees, dirt, and the remnants of the top of the base used to be. He could hear the roar of Mjolnir and rat-tat-tat of guns fired in the distance as he looked around him to see that they had fallen into a deep wide hanger bay.

He tapped his ear, only to find that the earpiece had fallen out somewhere in the middle of his fall. Pushing the lack of communication concern aside, he gritted his teeth as he slowly shifted, trying to pull himself out of the debris. The spike of pain returned and Steve paused, reaching behind to the source of it and ran across something slick before pulling his hand back to see that it was covered in dark red blood. He cursed silently as he realized something must have fallen hard enough to stab through his body armor and pierce him.

“Well, well, such an ignominious end to the great Captain America,” a soft weathered voice spoke up, echoing loudly in the cavernous hanger bay.

He twisted back around to see what could have once been a kindly old weathered face, but was twisted with a sardonic smile that looked like it could have been on Odin Allfather's face – except he knew he had never seen Odin wear such an expression. Still, it was eerie, but he pushed that thought aside as he saw him walk slowly over, the Chitauri sceptre hanging loosely in his right hand. There was something not right about him, Steve could feel it, but he could not pinpoint what was _off_ about him.

Steve did not know who the old man was, but he knew that he was holding the sceptre and anyone with half of their mind could see that he was walking with the pace of a languid predator who was watching their prey struggle. Steve wanted to get out, but at the same time, he also knew he was in a vulnerable position and so paused in his struggles to free himself, keeping his chest as low to the dusty ground as possible. Clint and Tony had both said how the sceptre worked, by having its point touch one's chest and Steve had no intention of letting whomever this old man was get a shot at him. At the same time he also knew he that if he didn't free himself, there was the chance of getting skewered by the sceptre's blade. Damned if he freed himself, damned if he did not free himself.

A quick look around the darkened shadows of the hanger bay around them told him that there were surviving Centipede soldiers around, but they were as dazed as he was, apparently not been told of their comrades exploding underneath them. He ignored the old man's taunt and made his decision. He braced himself against the debris covered ground, brushing aside the sharp shooting pain of his injury.

“I must congratulate you on your single-mindedness; your willingness to sacrifice everything for your friend that you would be so blind as to lead them all into a trap,” the old man said quietly, almost kindly if one could mistaken the bite of a viper to be just that. There was something imperious and regal in his tone, a condescending sound as if he was so used to talking down to people and lording over others – giving orders and having it instantly obeyed. A lot like Loki when he had first attacked New York, if Steve was not mistaken.

“Okay, first, the whole villain monologue thing is really over done though you do have more subtly than John Garrett; he was just a loon,” Coulson's voice suddenly interrupted and Steve twisted his head a little to see the Director of SHIELD standing on top of a pile of rubble near him, his once-immaculate suit dirtied and ripped in places. Coulson was bleeding freely from several cuts, but he did not look like he was bothered by them. He held Steve's vibranium shield in front of his body, a small nine-millimeter gun pointed straight at the old man's head. Coulson's familiar weapon, the Destroyer-created gun was nowhere in sight. “Second, why don't you put the sceptre down before you poke your own eye out?”

“Your bravado is admirable, Agent Phillip J. Coulson,” the old man shifted a little to face Coulson and Steve pulled himself out a little more, gritting his teeth at the pain of his wound. There had to be something still wedged in his body if it still hurt that much and was being affected by his movements. He reached behind him again and scrabbled towards where he felt the slickness of blood before finding the jagged edge of something and grabbed onto it. He blinked a little against the sudden white edges in his vision as he pulled on the embedded shrapnel that had pierced his right hip before it pulled out with a squishing sucking sound.

Steve gasped quietly, muffling his gasp against the ground as he heard more than saw the old man take a few steps toward Coulson, finding him a bigger threat at the moment than him. But Steve knew that he needed to be free – needed to help Coulson. He knew the Director could hold his own, had held his own so many times before, but there was something _off_ about the old man, something that screamed for Steve to get moving, to not put a non-super-soldiered agent in danger. Whether it was the fact that the old man was holding the sceptre or was the sceptre's subtle influence, it was something that he could not ignore.

“I was once interested in how you had come back to life,” the old man lifted the sceptre a little, “being stabbed in the back-”

The old man moved so fast that Steve would have sworn it like reading about teleportation in one of his old pulp science fiction books he had growing up. But he suddenly reappeared behind Coulson and even before Steve could open his mouth to warn him, Coulson had apparently turned to face the incoming attack and raised the red-white-blue shield, intercepting the sceptre with a hollow _thonk_.

“-shall we try it again, Agent?” the old man finished with a tense, kindly smile.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Coulson unloaded his handgun into the old man's face at close range, but the bullets made no impact and instead, seemingly pinged off of a shield of sorts. The gun clicked empty in a matter of seconds, before the old man stepped back with a tilt of his head, acknowledging Coulson's prowess in intercepting his attack while launching one of his own. It was as if he was _playing_ with the Director, his attention diverted from Steve.

Coulson seemed to know as much as he braced himself, tucking his body behind the shield a little more before the old man suddenly disappeared in a quick blur. Coulson spun again, the hollow _thonk_ of the sceptre hitting the shield once more, the old man reappearing for a split second with a cruel, lazy smile on his face, before disappearing once more and Coulson moved again. Another _thonk_ followed by more ducking and spinning and Steve grimaced, pulling himself free from the rubble before he saw it just a split second before it happened.

Coulson spun just a hair too late to intercept the old man's attack and the edge of the sceptre caught the edge of the shield, but it was enough to send a spray of blood into the air, followed shortly by the Director himself flying several feet into the air before slamming hard into a wall. He did not even get a chance to cry out as he slid down, a dazed look on his face from the force of the blow before the old man re-appeared, a few feet away from him. The red-white-blue shield clattered away from them, having been ripped out of Coulson's grip and Steve could see that the man had a broken, if not shattered arm judging by the unnatural angle it laid against the rubble.

“There was a brief moment, I would have found you fascinating enough to keep alive due to your resurrection, but alas, Agent Coulson, you are of no use to me,” the old man said with a congenial smile and that was when Steve _moved_.

He pushed himself off of the ground, ignoring the sudden feel and spurt of wet blood against his body armor from his freely bleeding injury, and charged at the old man. The instant he saw his body begin to turn to face him, the edge of a tight smile, he knew it was a trap, but adjusted. He _slid_ across the rocky debris, ducking under the wide swing that had been meant to catch him in the stomach or grab him, judging by the old man's freed hand and rolled to his feet, punching him in the back and head before reaching around to grab him. However, the old man ducked under his grip and retaliated with a strike of his own.

Steve felt the air rush out of him as he barely caught and trapped the arm punched at him. It felt like being hit with a ton of bricks, akin to like fighting Loki back in Stuttgart. He adjusted, grabbing the trapped arm and threw the old man to the side and released the arm, letting him roll as he ran after him. The old man dug the point of his sceptre into the ground, stopping his momentum before flicking the blade upward, sending a spray of debris towards Steve as he bent back and to the side a little, gritting his teeth at the way his wound pulled, followed by the feeling of something tearing, his healing factor already trying to knit up the wound, but his movements compounding it.

The old man's punch caught him in the stomach and Steve staggered back, catching his breath before blocking another blow to his head, instinctively lashing out with his left arm to hold off the sceptre that was aimed to cut his head off from his neck. He suddenly found himself bracing against the sceptre, the curved point barely touching the edges of his neck. To his dismay, Steve found that his arm was shaking, his grip wavering against when suddenly pain exploded as the old man jabbed at his hip wound. Steve cried out as his grip shook dangerously, the edges of the sceptre cutting a shallow line into his neck as his other arm scrabbled against the jab, but he could not pull the old man's arm free from digging into his wound.

“It took many months, years even, for your friend to completely break,” the old man suddenly hissed, his eyes dark and alight with a feverish sickening humor. “It would have been easy to say I broke him with this, instantaneous, but no, the Chitauri sceptre acquired just a few years ago would have made that easier. It was...the sweetness of turning one so slowly, of wiping one's mind to mold as their own, well...that was the greatest achievement of all.”

Steve felt his grip slip just a little bit, the sudden swooping _anger_ filling him at what the old man was saying. If he was...if this was who was behind HYDRA all along, even without Alexander Pierce's knowledge, the one he claimed was behind it all- Steve never realized he could actually see red, but he felt nothing but black _hatred_ for the old nameless man who stood in front of him. A very small part of him said that the man could be lying, but Steve could see the truth, could see to the depths of the man's sadistic dark eyes that he was not lying, that he _was_ responsible for the Winter Soldier.

“Would you like to see?” the old man's voice got a bit louder, as if addressing someone else, and a second later Steve only realized how _outclassed_ he was. It was _not_ like fighting Loki in terms of strength, but akin to fighting against Thanos, when his whole world exploded in white-hot agony; the hand he was trying to remove from digging into his wound jammed itself in further. He screamed, coughing out the coppery taste of blood, his left arm suddenly feeling weak as something, a spell maybe, raced across it-

“A world _without_ Captain America?”

Steve felt the pointed curve of the sceptre slicing a shallow line across his neck before the last thing he saw was silvery-blood-coated point cut across his uniform to settle above his heart-

The blue orb on the sceptre that somehow flashed like the icy blue of Thanos' eyes, trapping him-

Someone that sounded like Bucky screaming his name-

Then, there was nothing.

* * *

“STEVE!” the name involuntarily fell from James' lips as something swelled in him, to stop it, to do _something_ , but another part of him knew it was too late-

“No!” Thor had no compunctions and immediately dove down towards where Rogers, no, where _Steve_ had been fighting a weathered old man, a man _he_ knew.

It had been _him_ behind Zola, behind Strucker, behind _everything_. He _knew_ that. He knew it deep in his bones, deep in the mechanical grind of his arm as he had stared at the weathered lined, aged face. It was a face that had never aged since he had seen it. Had seen the old man time and time again. How many years? Seventy? More than seventy? It had not aged a single day and was still weathered and old, and _calculating_. Those dark eyes that saw everything, that watched. They watched him and he watched. He...he was-

Zola might have created the Winter Soldier, created _him_ from the ashes of the body that used to be James Buchanan Barnes, but it was _he_ who had twisted his mind, had hurt- There had been so much _pain_. So much agony because he had begged- He had pleaded- He had wished that because there was pain, that he _deserved it_. Because he _knew_ -

Eyes so old, so ancient, and they had _crushed_ him. One look, behind it all. He might have been hallucinating, might have been seeing things- Strucker, or the man claiming to be Strucker had tortured him, made him beg, made him _break_ , Zola had created him, maybe created his arm – though he had doubted that, but this man... _this man_...this inhuman man had just stood by. Stood for so long...stood like he was an insignificant insect, beneath him. He was not _worthy_... Watching. Waiting. Slowly playing with pieces as if they meant _nothing_ to him – and he somehow knew they did not mean anything-

This was the man that had manipulated it all...and he was-

“Karpov, Vasily,” James mouthed, as he saw Steve slump against the wall, head bowed, eyes closed, the remnant tail of a feathery blue wisp dissolving against the darker blue of his uniform.

It was as if the old man had heard him, suddenly turning his head to smile beatifically at him – _I will always get what is mine_ – before James' vision was obscured by a cape of red, silver-blue armor and Mjolnir's lightning striking down with a war cry from Thor who had leapt down at him.

James lurched into action, leaping down from where he had skidded to a stop, sniper rifle in hand as he had witnessed the tableau in front of him. Mjolnir's blow scattered lightning everywhere before Thor threw his hammer at Karpov and the old man went sailing across the hanger bay, slamming through several walls before Thor followed, ruthlessly charging and attack him. The sounds of their battle faded into the distance as James stood up hesitantly from his crouch, staring at where Steve was still slumped against the wall, head bowed, obscuring his facial features.

“S-Steve...” the name sounded so rusty from his mouth, but he thought he saw him twitch a little. The urge to kill Rogers, to kill Steve was there, but somehow he also knew that it was not his target that was vulnerable now, no, it was himself. He... He drew in a sharp breath; there was something deceptive in the way Steve was slumped against the wall, as if daring him to attack, and somehow he dared _not_ to. That this...this was...this was a predator in wait.

That Steve-

The irony of the role reversal was not lost on James as he gripped his sniper rifle tighter. Everything _screamed_ at him to kill Steve now, to stop him while he was like this- but he screamed back with everything he could; screamed a silent _why?!_ Why did he have to- Because he could feel the rush of pain, right in between his eyes, that his target was not dead, because he would- Because-

_You're going to die if you don't kill him!_

His breath hitched a little as he saw another twitch from Steve's almost motionless form.

_I don't-_

_Kill him- KILL- KiLL hIm- Kill him, kill him, kill him, kill him-_

_I don't-_

_Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it- Kill him! KILL HIM!_

“Steve...” he said quietly again, forcing himself to speak past the stabbing agony in between his eyes, the command that grew so uncomfortably loud in his mind, because Karpov had burrowed it deep within, twisting it inside of him. That he had to finish it because he _had_ to-

And just like that, it was as if Steve woke himself up from a trance, his body shaking a little as he slowly straightened. His head was still bowed as James took note of the distance clatter of feet, not more Centipede soldiers or Extremis ones, but of allies. He recognized the faint sound of Natalia's boots, the clomping tread of the iron man suit that belonged to Tony Stark along with other feet he did not recognize, but innately knew that they were non-hostile to him – allies of a sort.

Steve slowly lifted his head up-

_His eyes were blue and they were-_

No.

His eyes were _not_ blue.

His eyes... James lifted his sniper rifle to bear at Captain America, at Steven Grant Rogers, and fired.

His eyes were not blue; his eyes were utterly blank.

* * *


	29. Chapter 29

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Chapter 29_

 

The bullet found its mark, throwing Steve back against the wall, a bright red bloom above his heart. Even before he had finished that action, James moved forward, dropping his trusty sniper rifle and pulled out a knife. He could hear the distant sounds of lightning, Thor still attacking Karpov and ignored it. He feinted to his left as he approached, the mechanical whine of his arm whirring in a wild punch thrown at Steve's face. It was blocked as he twisted inward and out of the way of the retaliatory lunge. James slashed downward with his knife in his free hand, a quick succession of cuts that glanced off of the bloodied stars and stripes armor, hitting kevlar-woven hard plates before he jabbed his elbow into Steve's mid-section.

At the same time, he threw his right shoulder into Steve's bullet wound, sending him staggering back for a second before he felt his arm trapped by an iron grip. James turned and tried to roll out of the grip, but only succeeded in pulling his own arm into a painful lock. He lashed out, hitting Steve with his metallic arm as he released the knife in his trapped hand and caught it with his metal one. He stabbed it towards Steve's chest, only to find it caught, his grip shaking as he heard the whine of his arm powering up, to overpower through it-

And to have it suddenly jam into the wall, its passage scoring only Steve's uniform. James immediately released the useless weapon and took out another one- and found himself kicked hard in the chest, stumbling for a second before he rolled and dodged an hammering bent knee that had been meant for one of his legs. He felt Steve brush past him and instead of engaging him in combat,  _ pushed _ him, sending him stumbling down the debris pile where he managed to roll unnaturally gracefully to his feet and turn to face him.

James growled out softly as he stalked forward; those eyes were  _ not _ blue, they were  _ unnatural _ . He twirled his knife a little before gripping in a reverse grip and sent the blade towards Steve's head. A tight humorless grin worked its way to the corner of his lips as it was easily intercepted before he quickly  _ kicked _ at Steve, the small blade in one of the toes of his boot slammed into his thigh, making him grunt with pain and tighten his grip on the blade that had been aimed at his head. He twisted his foot to the side, breaking the blade and completed his spin with a round house kick, but it was blocked by a forearm just before he reached his head. He shuffled a step back before punching Steve, once, twice, aiming for his wounds, each one blocked with bone-crunching force.

Steve retaliated with his own lightning swift attack, and it was only a second later, when he found himself kicked hard in the chest once more, that he realized Steve had been holding back since the events on the Helicarrier. How much he had been holding back was up for speculation, but James narrowed his eyes and blocked an attempt to trap his flesh and blood arm, recognizing the opening to break his arm again. It was an odd clarity of sorts, through the haze of the pain stabbing in between his eyes, that he could actively seek out and attack Captain America, attack his target Steve Rogers. Attack, but not kill.

Attack and...

And do what?

The mindless hum of the kill order still burned in his mind, searing in between his eyes, but it was belied by the unexpected clarity he had – staring at the blank eyes, eyes that should have been blue, should have had  _ concern, light humor, sadness, sorrow, hopefulness, everything but pity _ . No pity. Those eyes never showed pity, not even before Steve Rogers had been granted the serum and rescued him from the clutches of HYDRA, not after all they had been through. Not even a single hint of pity. There had always been belief, acceptance, everything that he had seen in those blue eyes...now blank, now without anything in them.

And as James counterattacked, blocking, kicking, and striking back at Steve, he realized that he  _ remembered _ . Not speculative memories, nothing like flashbacks, but he remembered. He remembered, he  _ knew _ the subtly of emotions that had been there, of why he had sought out Captain America, sought out Steve Rogers. Yes, it had been because he knew that Steve could draw his target for him, to direct him, he had been afraid of his programming, but Steve had been fearless, had been willing to accept it and keep his promise to be on guard. 'Til the end of the line' had been said both verbally and non-verbally; and it had broken something within him, had in turn made him want to fight his programming, to break through the tests, the pain, because Steve believed in him.

Natalia had said that it was to each their own to break through the programming seared into their minds; she had only said that it was to survive and James realized he  _ wanted _ to survive. Because... Because if he did not, then somehow he knew that it would not be Steve looking at him, at others without pity, but others would look at  _ him _ with pity. Without understanding and with clear judgment because of the facts, not all of the facts, but enough of it, the others already looked at him with pity and judgment. He suddenly, did not want them to look at Steve with the same look because...because he succeeded in his programming.

It was not Steve who was supposed to be like this, acting like this. He was not supposed to have a blank gaze with no emotion. No...that was supposed to be him. James was not immune to the fact that he was, still is, a deadly force to be reckoned with, supposedly deprived of emotions, a perfect assassin with no remorse. Programmed to kill without a second thought, given orders with latitude and critical thinking to maximize his chances of success. That was what they had programmed, had broken him into, right?

Steve with his blank look, with his deadly intent radiating waves of  _ nothing _ , that was not...right. Not...what...he remembered; what he knew, what he had read, what he had seen in the brief flashes of memories; in the slow breakdown of images in his head, words, voices, everything deep down in his bones he  _ knew  _ about Steve Rogers. He wanted to  _ prove _ to them that he was worthy of the faith of Steve Rogers; of little skinny Steve Rogers - “ _ So, you're ready to follow Captain America into battle?” “Hell no, I'm following a skinny kid from Brooklyn.” _

And so, James did something he could feel his whole body reacting to, screaming at him to defend himself as he deliberately left himself wide open from a fast combination strike- Only to find himself flying through the air and landed heavily onto the debris-covered ground. Bits and pieces of rock and concrete smashed into his face, cutting into him as he tucked himself in and rolled to a stop. He managed to get his bearings in time to see the booted feet of Steve pressing his advantage and threw up his arms in a block against his face-

Only for Steve's attack to be intercepted by a red-haired, black-suited blur leaping over him and tackling Steve to the ground. She kneed him in the face before the arc of electricity burst forth from the arms of the Widow's Bite. Steve dropped heavily to the ground as Natalia leap off of his shoulders and rolled away. James caught the signal  _ Catch! _ she flashed at him with her hands before he sat up and reached his left hand up as he felt something being thrown towards his head.

The thonk of Steve's vibranium shield connected solidly with his metal one and James grabbed it, shifting it to his flesh-and-blood one as he gripped it tightly and held it front of him as Steve got to his feet, having recovered from the electric shock. He knelt defensively as Steve languidly stalked forward, a little disturbed at how like a predator he was acting like, having only seen him act in a defensive manner. Never, even in the brief flashes of overwhelming memories, juxtaposing in a disorienting fashion, had he ever seen Steve move like this, like he could easily slip into the shadows, like an assassin, like  _ himself _ .

James realized that he was uncomfortable, possibly even disturbed by the fact that Steve could act in such a way.  _ It was me! It was supposed to be me! I'm the one who took all the licks, all the hits, all of the kill shots, did everything because Steve's...he's...he's too good for it! He's  _ Steve!  _ He's...he can't-  _ He let loose the barest shuddering of breath as he slowly understood that even though the kill order was pounding in his mind, he could not execute it, no matter what. Natalia had been right, the pain drove him; it drove him and it agonized him, but it drove him; because...because he could not stand to see Steve Rogers like this. Could not stand to see his target, his former target, like this. But most of all, because he knew it was supposed to be him like that instead of Steve.

Vasily Karpov said it had taken months, years even to break him, and though James knew that he could have been lying – after all, the man could not be trusted on just his word – he also knew that Karpov always spoke with a single grain of truth in his lies. He knew it deep within him that it was Karpov who fashioned him into the Winter Soldier. Armin Zola had created him physically, may have helped break him, but it was Vasily Karpov, perhaps also Baron von Strucker if his faulty memories were to be trusted, who broke him, turned him into what he was – maybe even seared the kill order in him with the technology he had to blast his mind into oblivion, erase memories. He was the blank slate, the assassin in the background. He was the shadow to Steve's sun. Steve might have started the fights with the bullies – or the bullies started it - but James knew that it was he who finished the fight with Steve by his side. Captain America was a symbol, a sign of the goodness that people can do – the Winter Soldier was the opposite.

It was not supposed to happen to Steve, to Captain America.

It was wrong.

And normally, wrong things were put to right. Thus, in order to right this wrong, the easiest solution was to kill Steven Grant Rogers, but James knew that too, was wrong. He did not know what to do as he held the shield defensively in front of him as Steve turned his languid stalk into a running charge at him, ignorant of his freely bleeding wounds. James braced himself behind the shield, but just before Steve reached him, the barest whisper of an  _ arrow _ of all things embedded the ground in between them. James only had a moment of seeing a blinking red light before the arrowhead exploded, sending him tumbling end-over-end, burnt pieces of concrete, metal, and shards cutting past his armor and into him. His ears rang for a brief disorienting moment, before he shook his head and caught the glimpse of Steve landing heavily opposite of him, having also been thrown back from the explosion, but was rolling to his feet.

“Knock him out! It's the only way to get him back to normal!” a voice that sounded slightly pained and out of breath spoke up, before another explosive arrowhead rocked Steve's feet, sending him diving to the side.

James caught a quick glimpse of an archer, the same one who had sent him the Red Room coded message that he needed help, firing several more arrows, making Steve dodge each time. The archer looked like he was in obvious pain, but not from any visible injuries, but kept firing his arrows. The wisp of flaming red hair out of the corner of his eye told him that Natalia was sweeping up the other side of the debris pile, but a quick look at Steve showed that he was not aware of it. She suddenly vaulted over the small scattered pile of metal debris she had been using as cover and leap at him again. She punched him in the shoulder with one of her Widow's Bites, while her other hand jammed itself against his hip wound and electrocuted it.

Steve went down hard with a strangled cry, but just as quickly, he moved, his arms a blur and James saw Natalia thrown hard against half of a destroyed quinjet, the breath knocked out of her as she crumpled to the ground. He had moved as soon as she had launched her attack, having innately sensed Steve's intent to kill Natalia, seeing her as the bigger threat. He could not allow that to happen, not only for Natalia's sake, but for Steve's own sake; but even as he moved, he knew he was going to be too late-

The sudden roar of the gigantic energy-based gun Director Coulson carried with him cut in between Steve and Natalia, making him pause long enough for James to launch his own attack. He swung his fist at Steve as he caught the brief glimpse of the Director himself, still dazed looking, but coherent enough to stand up and prop himself up with the gun he had apparently dug out of the debris. Then his vision was obscured by a blur of red-white-blue, blond-hair and blank eyes. James pivoted, smashing the shield into Steve's body, while grabbing his other arm and tried to hit in him the face with the shield. He was blocked and received a jab in the kidneys for his trouble. Ignoring the spike of pain, he attacked again, twisting and turning this way and that. The whine of his arm was growing louder and James knew that something must have been damaged in it, but kept pressing his attack, all the while dodging retaliatory strikes and blocks from Steve.

He drew his flesh-and-blood arm back more than once as he felt Steve clawing at it, trying to get the shield away from him; mindful of the fact that he also could have his own arm broken like he had nearly done to him at the bank vault. Instead, he used it like a bludgeon, whacking Steve again across his shoulder, trying to clip his head enough to knock him out. His metal arm blocked the strikes, using its power and force to bruise the knuckles on Steve's hands before he twisted around Steve, striking him again in the back and propelling him forward.

James drew out another knife, but instead of using it, he tucked it inside his flesh-and-blood arm, where it sat nestled against the shield and charged forward towards Steve's exposed back. However, the blond-haired man suddenly dodged, going down on one knee and James rolled across his back to avoid a sweep of his feet in order to trip him. He used the shield as a cover to roll, landing on his feet-

Only to have Steve land a solid kick to his ribs, sending him staggering back, his breath coming in gasps as he felt more than one break from the repeated strain. The shield was a hindrance, he realized, and he needed to be rid of it. He had no experience fighting with it when it was clear that Steve had plenty fighting with and against it since their first encounter on the causeway in Washington D.C.

As Steve charged towards him, he let it loose, sending it flying towards his head, and saw it batted out of the way as it clattered to the ground, Steve taking the split second to see where it dropped- James  _ moved _ , striking with his shield-less hand, the knife arcing downward to embed itself deep into tissue and muscle, only for his flesh-and-blood hand to be caught in an iron grip, before he felt himself being painfully twisted around-

James saw brief stars in his vision as he instinctively retaliated by head-butting Steve in the head several times, but the vise-like grip would not release. He gritted his teeth and punched with his metal one only for it to be caught by Steve's other hand before he trapped that one and forced him to bend almost painfully backwards. He staggered and scrabbled against the attempt to force him to the ground knowing that if he dropped now, then Steve had the advantage in terms of how they were trapped and would easily end up with his neck being snapped instead of choked-

“Barnes! Drop!”

He did not even question the order, just the mere fact that it was one and let his footing slip. He crashed heavily down to the ground with a thump just as two shiny bright energy blasts caught Steve in the upper shoulder and side, sending him rolling to his side, pulling his own trapped arms with him at the same time. James did not waste the opportunity to reach out with his metal hand, grab the handful of Steve's hair from his brief disoriented state and brutally slammed his head into the ground. He saw the brief instance when the blank eyes suddenly turned blue before they rolled back into Steve's head as he slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Silence reigned in the remnants of the hanger bay save for the quiet hum of a quinjet nearby and the harsh, wheezing gasps of his own breath. James blinked several times, the adrenaline slowly fading as looked up to see Tony Stark standing at the end of the quinjet's landing ramp. The warped battered remnants of his suit's gloves were slowly powering down as he lowered his arms from the repulsor blast he had fired at Steve. Stark's dark eyes were unreadable, but he might have looked a little relieved.

“Is he...?”

“Alive,” James realized that he was still gripping Steve's hair and belatedly released it, drawing his metal arm back with a quiet whine. Other than that, he did not move from where he half-sat, half-knelt next to him, feeling something that he thought he would have named as protective instincts except for the disquieting sensation of not-quite completing his mission and instead, knocking Steve out. Instead, he just stared, unsure of what to make of everything, of what had happened. He could feel the bite and hitch of pain with each breath he took, but at the same time the pain was easing oh so slowly, his accelerated healing already doing its work in repairing his battered body.

At the same time, he could still feel the kill order within, but somehow, it was muted; the pain was definitely still there, but easier to ignore. It was like shoving something annoying to the side, something that he knew would never give him peace, but maybe Natalia had been right in a way to overcome it. To turn it into something useful, not to fight it.

“ _ Are you all right, Yasha? _ ” Natalia's quiet voice sounded breathless and he turned his head a little to see her making her way towards him, moving in such a way that he knew that both of her shoulders had been dislocated and her collarbone fractured, but otherwise, she looked like she sported no other visible injuries save for a few cuts across her face and on her body armor.

“ _ Da _ ,” he replied absently in Russian as he realized something, “ _ the student teaches the teacher _ .  _ You were right. _ ”

She laughed lightly before he felt the barest of pressure on his shoulder, two fingers, a far more intimate gesture code of  _ I am well _ than if she had placed her hand on his bicep for a friendlier, allied greeting. It seemed familiar to her, as if she had asked him a similar question back in the days of the Red Room. He reached out and pressed his metal index and middle finger against her own.  _ I am well _ . He also knew that the fact that if she was moving her hands even with her dislocated shoulders and fractured collarbone spoke a lot about her mental state and her worry for him. He did not have the full memories of her, of their time together, their training, everything in between, but she apparently had, and he suddenly did not want to lose that. Not with coming so close to losing Rogers, losing Steve.

They, Natalia and Steve, they were the ones who knew him, who had memories of him that he had only begun to glimpse and he did not want to lose that. He knew that if they knew him, then perhaps he would begin to know himself. And Karpov had threatened that... Something within James twisted itself with hatred, a foreign feeling, but one he faintly recognized from recently unlocked memories. It was a hatred not only for what the old man had done to him, had twisted and used him so badly like Zola, but that he had the gall to indirectly hurt his friends to get at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the archer approach, one hand gripping his bow, his other slung around Director Coulson's shoulders, helping him bear the weight of what looked like a broken leg.

“Everyone all right?” Sam Wilson appeared behind Stark, a medical bag in his hand, his face pale, but he looked otherwise relatively healthy as he jumped the last few feet to the ground. It seemed that almost no one had gotten out of this battle unscathed, as he glimpsed Agent Triplett and May's ashen faces beyond the cockpit door as they looked back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Director give half of a wave, grimacing at the movement. The young woman, Skye suddenly scurried out of the quinjet, another small medical pack in hand as she approached the Director and the archer, helping him bear the weight. It seemed like she was the only one of them to not even have a significant injury on her aside from Wilson.

“...Steve,” Wilson approached cautiously and James met his gaze, seeing the wariness, the hesitation, but also the unspoken question of whether or not he was allowed to examine Steve with him near by.

“He's going to need to be sedated, heavily, before you can try to patch him up, Sam,” Natalia spoke up quietly and James started a little before the soothing pressure of her fingers on his shoulder quieted him down. “We're also going to need an iso ward where he can be monitored until we're sure he's not being influenced by the sceptre.”

“How do we know if he's out of the sceptre's influence?” Wilson asked as he dug around his bag, pulling out all of the small bottles of sedatives he had along with several large needles and started to draw them out.

“You don't, I do,” James turned as Barton spoke up, his voice hard in the stillness of the hanger bay. “I'll take the watches-”

“Clint, you don't have to do it alone,” Natalia's voice was also hard, but she was instead, glaring at the archer and James realized that he was none other than Clint Barton.

“Addendum to Steve Rogers and Nicholas J. Fury's files, former SHIELD Agent, Clint Barton. Known to have been turned by hostile alien named Loki before the Battle of New York. Supposedly broken out of the alien influence before the battle,” he murmured, reciting what he remembered from the kill files.

“That's what HYDRA has on me?” Barton gave him a humorless smile, the tone of his voice belying the tight anger in it.

“You were a known associate of both Level 8 priority targets and had to be taken into account if you interfered. Alexander Pierce did not think you would considering your status then,” James shrugged and saw the smile turn into something darkly humorous.

“Nice to learn that Fury pissed of HYDRA enough to get another Level 8 on him,” Barton barked out a bitter laugh before he nodded towards Wilson, “Nat's not kidding on the sedation. Cognitive re-calibration usually does the work, but who the hell knows what the sceptre can do to someone like Cap.”

James looked sharply at Barton who gave him a wry smile, “It forces you to do things, attack people, betray them...things you normally wouldn't do...”

“...Like programming...” he whispered softly and saw the faint nod as he turned back to see Wilson injecting the first of many needles of sedatives into Steve. Already, from his vantage point, he could see Steve's shallower wounds healing themselves, the blood bubbling a bit as it clotted, the skin starting to take a shiny sheen of first layer scabs. “Karpov wanted me to kill him or him to kill me...wanted a world without Captain America...”

“But it didn't happen,” Natalia replied softly, her fingers on his shoulder a weight that he suddenly was glad was there.

He wanted to say 'it did not', but could not quite make himself speak the words, still too afraid, too scared of the sudden newly-founded freedom, if one could call it that, that had prevented him from smashing in Steve's face when he had grabbed him by the hair. He had only used enough force to knock him unconscious when he could have easily bashed his head in harder, snapping his neck at the same time. That would have been the end of that, the end of the mission, free from the pain like when he had first killed Nicholas J. Fury.

“Hey guys...” Stark's voice suddenly called out, “hate to interrupt, but where the hell is Thor?”

James looked up to see Natalia stand up, her touch retreating from him as she tapped her ear, no doubt to speak over the radio she wore. He had ripped his own out when he had raced to collapsed hanger bay. At the same time, he realized the sounds of thunder and lightning had long faded in the brief harried fight with Steve, leaving only the eerie silence of the hanger bay. Even the Centipede and Extremis soldiers that had survived the initial collapse were no where in sight, at least not where he could sense them with his enhancements. It was as if they had just disappeared.

“Thor if you can hear-”

She never finished her sentence as a loud crescendo of an explosion rocked the area, decompressing the air for a second that James felt like he could not breathe, before suddenly the quinjet's engines exploded as lightning played across it. The quinjet reared in the air wildly as Agent May sought to control it, Stark quickly grabbing onto the edges, riding it out. James' first instinct was to grab Natalia by the arm, pulling her down to the ground before he threw himself over Steve's head. At the same time Wilson covered Steve's body as the quinjet crashed heavily to the ground, sending a wave of dust and debris into the air.

“I have seen the error of my ways,” Thor's booming voice echoed across the cavernous hanger bay as all of them blearily looked up to see him descending from the sky with a regal and haughty look on his face. Even though James knew him for a very short time, he knew that look was not right on Thor's face. Mjolnir was held aloft, crackling with spent power. Thor's familiar red cape fluttered in the wind generated by his descent, giving him an imposing, if not otherworldly look about him.

That was also when James and the others noticed Karpov  _ floating _ nearby, arms crossed, still dressed in an immaculate suit, but with sinister-smile on his face. One of his hands still held the sceptre and the blue gem on its crown glowed brightly. The same glow that was reflected deep in Thor's eyes, but had not been present in Steve's eyes except for the terrible blank look.

“...Fuck...don't tell me Karpov got Thor,” Clint swore quietly as he pushed himself off the ground and drew one of his arrows, pointing it straight at the two hovering in mid-air.

“My long-lost uncle Baldr has shown me the pettiness of mere mortals and of the Allfather's injustice against the populace of the realms as a whole,” Thor intoned with a gesture to Karpov, sounding almost sad and disappointed if not for the eerie glow in his eyes.

“Come again, big guy?” Stark managed to crawl out of the crashed quinjet. “You know you're talking nonsense because of the glowstick of destiny kind of screwing with your head-”

“You would not understand, Tony Stark-”

“Oh, I understand plenty,” Stark suddenly fired his repulsors, but they were deflected by Mjolnir before Thor retaliated. A bolt of lightning hit Stark square in the chest, his arc reactor glowing brightly as he held his hands up to ward off the arcs of electricity, but suddenly cried out as more played over his exposed armor, hitting his skin as the smell of burnt flesh and ozone sizzled in the air.

James could see Karpov's eyes alight with glee as he watched what was happening. Barton fired his arrows at the same time Natalia, Coulson, Skye, even Wilson fired their guns at Thor to try to stop him from frying Stark in his broken suit of armor. But the bullets pinged uselessly off of some kind of shield Thor had put up with Mjolnir. The red-caped alien suddenly swept his arm out, lightning playing all over the area, sending rocky debris flying into the air, flying this way and that like invisible missiles. James ducked, lifting his left arm up instinctively to block the worst of the flying pieces of small rock and sparks of lightning as he realized something needed to be thrown at Thor to at least disarm him. He scrabbled near Steve's body and grasped onto the shield that had fallen in the middle of their battle, charging forward.

He saw Thor point Mjolnir at him and fire off a bolt of lightning. James intercepted the attack with his left arm and watched as it dissipated harmlessly over his metal arm, the technology Stark had installed, holding up against the waves of electricity. It did not even touch the ball of his shoulder socket, crawling up and down his arm and he only had a moment of triumph before more lightning was hurled down at him. James ducked again and blocked with his arm in front of him, feeling the odd sensation of like someone brushing a feathery light touch over it, before the sensation changed into something that felt heavier, weighted. He blinked as he realized that there was a limit to how much electricity his arm could could absorb without being compromised.

He hefted Steve's shield with his other hand and threw it, just as he felt something  _ pop _ in his left arm, the neural connections sending spikes of pain across his nervous system, freezing him in place as every single neural feedback in his arm overloaded from the sheer amount of electricity playing over it. He only got a split second of seeing the shield hit Thor's arm, sending Mjolnir's deadly bolts scattering everywhere, before he toppled to the ground, his muscles locking into place from the damaged bio-feedback of his arm. He landed on the rocky debris, feeling more than one piece dig into him as he saw the shield curve back over his head and land nearby with a hollow sound. At the same time, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the remnants of electrical arcs playing over several damaged quinjets, exploding them as the sparks ignited their ruptured fuel tanks.

“Shit, shit!” Sam's voice echoed near him as the explosions sent rumbles through the base once more, but instead of stopping, the rumbles continued, only growing rougher as Natalia's face appeared above his own.

“James?! Can you move?” she shook his shoulder and he grimaced, trying to make himself get up, only for his nerves and locked muscles to send spikes of pain across his body for even attempting to move. He gritted his teeth and pushed the pain aside, and sat up, freezing for a second as he looked up to see Karpov draw a thin blue line of  _ something _ into the air, the faint feeling of something  _ horrific _ before he grabbed Thor's arm and the two disappeared seemingly into the shadows.

“What the...” Skye shouted before ducking as debris caved in around them and James looked around. They were trapped...with everything exploding around them, more than likely signifying that the base was about to collapse in on itself. When he had hit Thor's arm with Steve's shield, he must have scattered the lightning everywhere and started a chain reaction.

“Holy shit!” the archer, Barton, suddenly swore and James looked up as a new sound appeared above them, followed by a quinjet uncloaking itself, the ramp opening with Dr. Banner's and the female SHIELD agent, Sharon appearing at the edge.

“Come on!” Dr. Banner gestured wildly at them and James pushed himself off of the ground, ignoring the pull of his locked muscles as he staggered to his feet, Natalia helping him. He only realized at the last second to grab Steve's shield, before he scrabbled over to where Sam Wilson was trying to carry Steve and hauled Steve up by the collar of his uniform. Together, the two of them, with Natalia supporting his other side, hurried to the quinjet, all but dragging Steve with them as the others also rushed aboard. Sharon ran past them, towards where Stark was pushing Agents May and Triplett ahead of himself, both whom were bleeding freely from gut wounds. Stark's his face a mask of pain, bleeding from wherever Mjolnir's lightning had touched his exposed skin. Sharon helped Triplett while Stark helped May.

They were quickly followed by Barton and Skye carrying Coulson in between them before Dr. Banner slammed the button to raise the ramp and spoke into a radio, “Go, Hill, go!”

The swooping sensation of the quinjet quickly taking off was only belied by the violent rocking sensation as it struggled to gain altitude in wake of explosions happening all around it. But a few seconds later, it was replaced by a still calmness and audible sighs echoed across the cargo hold of the quinjet itself.

“Fury told Hill, Sharon, and I to get here as soon as possible,” the doctor looked sheepish, “we only got into your airspace a few minutes ago and realized what was happening. Sorry we took so long...”

Stark chuckled weakly and absently hit Banner in the leg a couple of times with rough affection as he laid sprawled out on the ground, “Couldn't have timed it better myself, Bruce. Good save...”

James tuned out the rest of the exhausted banter as he looked down at Steve's unconscious form, noting that in their haste to get into the quinjet, Steve had all but landed half sprawled on his shield like a makeshift pillow next to where he sat against a jump seat. He saw his eyes flutter open groggily and the corner of his lips twitched up in relief. Steve's eyes were blue once more, a sleepy, drug-addled blue, but blue nonetheless. And they were...

“...'till the end of the line, Stevie...” he murmured quietly, as he met those blue eyes. He would have liked to have said that the words were involuntary, but that was a lie. They were purely voluntary and James...no, Bucky, knew that it was a start; finally not frozen in time.

Steve's eyes were blue and they understood.

* * *

 


	30. Epilogue

Frozen in Time

by: Shadow Chaser

 

**Disclaimer:**

All Marvel characters do not belong to me, they belong to Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Comics.

 

**Story:**

 

_Epilogue_

 

A week had passed since the Avengers came back from the Alps. Most of them were still recovering from their injuries, but they had already begun their search for Thor and for the man known as Vasily Karpov. To the Avengers who had worked with Loki two years previous, had fought Thanos a year before that, they knew that Karpov had the ability to walk the shadows. To the newer Avengers who did not know of that, they were brought up to speed on the developments and given the mission files from previous interactions with Loki and his use of magic, or magick as Steve pronounced it.

Steve had been cleared from any and all influence the sceptre had on his mind for their brief moment Karpov had turned him, but even he was still quiet and contemplative; sometimes with a haunted look on his face that he tried hard to hide whenever others were around. But Bucky could see it, especially the times that _he_ was around, could see the guilt eating away at Steve, at what he had been forced to do in that brief moment; the ruthlessness, the knowledge that he could easily have killed them all – that he had been holding back his full strength; that he had badly injured his friends. Bucky suspected that, similar to what he had gone through in the past few weeks, Steve had fought hard within, fought against whatever influence Karpov had on him to stop himself from outright killing his friends until one of them could deal the counter blow. He wondered if Steve took solace in that fact or like the still slowly returning memories in his head, perhaps wallowed more in the guilt than the actuality of the situation.

He watched now, sitting in the corner of the patio, half shadowed by the angle of the sun as Steve and Sam played a relatively quiet game of chess on the opposite side, all but oblivious to his presence. Bandages still covered a swath of Steve's left arm, held in a sling to stabilize the bullet wound he had received. The wound itself was healing, but it was the internal injuries that Dr. Banner had been more concerned about, Natalia's Widow's Bite doing some significant damage in their efforts to knock Steve out. Bucky noted that Steve still sat gingerly in the chair, his left hip and thigh wound also healing, though again with Natalia's efforts had a lot of internal damage.

Sam Wilson himself looked physically healthy, but from his vantage point, his sharp eyes picked out the dark circles underneath his eyes, the lines of fatigue and knew that the VA counselor was still battling his own demons. He did not know what Wilson had gone through, but had overheard a random comment by Stark when the two had been near each other about false memories. He supposed that instead of physical injuries, Sam had suffered mental ones intead that left scars that would not be healed so easily.

Bucky took a quick mental assessment of his own capabilities and found himself lacking a little. His arm had been severely damaged by Mjolnir's lightning, and while Stark had offered to repair it, he still found it uncomfortable to let the mechanical genius touch his arm – triggering random horrific images in his mind each time Stark touched it. It was slow going, but it was something he knew would take a while to repair. He considered having himself placed under sedation to speed it up, but surprisingly it was Stark who had flat out refused that option, stating that it would not do anyone any good. His ribs had already mended and the minor gashes and cuts received during the fight had all but healed. His mind though...it was hard to describe what it felt like. The sensation, the pain, the kill order was certainly still there as he stared at Steve and Sam, jabbing right in between his eyes, but somehow it did not overpower him as it had before.

He blinked once as he saw Sam gesture with a random piece that had been already taken off of the board, Steve's jaw stubbornly set against whatever he was saying and the corners of Bucky's lips twitched at the familiar – blessedly familiar _memory_ – of such an expression. It was one he distinctly remembered Steve having in almost all of the scattered memories in his mind. Sam had been urging Steve to talk to Clint Barton about his experience under the sceptre's influence, but Steve had stubbornly refused every suggestion. Bucky thought it was a good idea, but he also was hesitant to speak up, afraid that his newfound freedom from the pressure of his programming was going to reverse itself and make him attack Steve again. So he had kept himself relatively far away from Steve, but close enough to still feel the pain in between his eyes, a self applied test of sorts. The irony of such a...test...was not lost on him.

The wind from the patio suddenly shifted, bringing their quiet murmuring conversation towards him even though he had been able to read their lips easily from where he was.

“...-wonder if Karpov, or Baldr, if Thor's to be believed-”

“Seriously? Baldr, like in the Norse myths that you and I, and probably every single English high school class read as a kid, that Baldr?”

“Thor exists and he wields Mjolnir,” Steve pointed out, making a move with bishop, “and check...”

“...Dammit,” Sam growled quietly before moving another piece, “so what's this about Karpov, Baldr, whatever the hell his name is?”

“I'm just wondering if maybe he walked the shadows into another realm?”

“A wha-? Come again?”

“It's something Loki could do, walking the shadows of Yggdrasil; like hidden portals of that sort, bypassing the Bifrost transportation Asgard has. Based on what the others said they felt in that moment, it seems like to me Karpov walked the shadows. Maybe he went to another realm and the searches JARVIS's running is a moot point.”

“Well...we'll know in another few days after the searches are finished-”

Bucky suddenly leap to his feet, tensing for an attack as he felt that same whisper-god-awful feeling again, like when Karpov had drawn a thin blue line, opening a portal into the shadows. At the same time Steve turned around in his chair, Sam half rising from his; only to see a tall angular-looking man with black hair, a sharp nose and cheekbones, and green-blue eyes step out from the shadows. He was dressed in black-green-gold colors, the exact opposite coloration of Thor's red-silver-blues. A haughty look highlighted his aristocratic features as he seemingly sneered at the sight of them.

“Loki...” for a second Steve looked surprised before his brow furrowed. Bucky realized that this was Loki, the self-proclaimed Trickster God in the files he had read since their return to New York.

It seemed though, Loki was not in a trickster mood, his voice hard and angry as he demanded, “Where is Thor?”

 

~END~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Final Notes:**  
>  Thank you for taking the time to read this story and leave comments and kudos on it. I've really appreciated the support and criticism, especially since I had not exactly intended on writing any wholly Avengers-centric stories.  
> The idea came to me when I was plotting out Ragnarok and realized I needed a catalyst to put the whole of that story into motion. It really did not hit him until after I watched of _CA:TWS_ back in April when I realized, Loki's Chitauri sceptre could easily be the catalyst and thus I planned a story around it. I also wanted the chance to write Bucky Barnes since the Winter Soldier is one of my favorite Marvel comic book characters (hilariously enough, I don't prefer comic!Cap, and I much prefer movie!Cap – less stick up his ass) – and plus the relationship between comic!Cap and comic!Bucky is more of a mentorship than the brotherhood/best friends like in the movies. I also wanted, like many other authors, to plot out Bucky's eventual recovery and meeting with Cap post- _CA:TWS_ and thus became the central plotline to this story with the Thor elements sprinkled in to tie it ultimately to the Trickster Universe.  
>  I also wanted to explore the fallout of the dissolution of SHIELD, especially with Coulson now as the head without running headlong into the eventual Season 2 of _Agents of SHIELD_ , so I set this story as one year after the events of _CA:TWS_ where everyone would be in a certain place in their lives. There was also the element of Bucky's recovery that I knew I could not do justice in the immediate aftermath of the movie without actually being a psychologist and doctor, hence the minor time skip. I figured, Bucky would have had a year of sorting out jumbling and returning memories and it was where I would start off my story and add in the more sinister elements of mind control and programming (partially because, I freely admit, I'm a sadist to my favorite characters – don't judge...).  
>  Another element I wanted to explore was the whole BlackWinter/WinterWidow relationship – I was/still am a huge fan of the pairing in the comics (Ed Brubaker, you broke my heart). I had a lot of fun plotting out what I would have thought the MCU's version of the Red Room would have been like and tying it in with Ward, Strucker, Karpov, and everything in between. Another comic influence that was excised late in the writing process was that Bucky was supposed to get all of his memories back (ala what happened in the comics with the Cosmic Cube), via the Chitauri sceptre instead, but writing the last few chapters at that time just did not make sense from a story flow point of view and was rather jarring.  
> I had the most fun writing the combat scenes, a nice break from writing magick and spell slinging for the past two stories I've written as Loki-centric, so it was nice to stretch out and use my martial arts training again as well as write a little more realism into a story than more fantastical elements. I've also had a lot of fun writing Steve and Bucky's relationship, seeing it not as slash as some would think, but rather as a familial and brotherly, a twist similar, yet so dissimilar to what Thor and Loki have gone through in the stories previous to this one.  
> The one thing I want to emphasize is that while this chapter of Bucky and Steve's lives has been completed, their story is far from finished, as are the other Avengers, but the next story is going to be putting the focus back on Loki. I do have at least a one-shot planned regarding Bucky, Steve, Natasha, Clint, Coulson, Ward, and the whole Red Room thing – but that will be written after _Ragnarok_ is finished.  
>  **Again, thank you for reading and I want to take the time to thank the following reviewers as of 10/27/2014:** Akayuki Novak, Qweb, beverlie4055, JuliaE.k5, Lamarquise, jwill21, Red Paradise Lost, gingerrogers12345, Agent Ruby Red, writer314, jeps, RollingUpHigh, heartdraconis19361, bronze andromeda shun, NattiDino, Ara Goddess of the Broken, the many unnamed “guests” that left reviews, Hieiko, delikizzz, bedb, Tera_Earth, EnsignWhispy, dragonfly, IsaacGirl14.  
>  For those who have just found this fic, have just finished it (thank you for your patience in finishing a very long fic), or have even just left a review on it, thank you for your comments and support! Most of all, I want to thank my beta reader Legume Shadow for once again, taking the time to nitpick and edit the chapters. Please move your bookmarks to either an author alert or to my next story in this series _The Trickster: Ragnarok_.


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